6 '  7'  p 


j.»«»'*'*'°'"*'*«4 


PRINCETON,  3Sr.  J, 


Shelf 


BL  80  .C3  1893  v.l 
Caird,  Edward,  1835-1908. 
The  evolution  of  religion 


THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RELIGION. 


PUBLISHED    BY 

JAMES   MACLEHOSE  AND   SONS,   GLASGOW, 
^nblishtrs  to  the  glnittrsttB. 

MACMILLAN    AND   CO.,    LONDON    AND   NEW   YORK. 
LondoH,     -     -    Simpkiyi,  Hainilton  and  Co. 
Cambridge,    -    Macmillan  and  Bowes. 
Edinburgh,     ■    Douglas  and  Foiilis. 

MDCCCXCIII. 


THE 

EVOLUTIO:t^  OF  RELIGION 

THE  GIFFORD  LECTURES  DELIVERED  BEFORE  TLIE 

UNIVERSITY  OF  ST.  ANDREWS  IN  SESSIONS 

1S90-91  AND  1891-92 


<J/^' 


EDWARD  CAIRD,  LL.D.,D.C.L. 

PROFESSOR  OF  MORAL  PHILOSOPHY  IN  THE  UI^VERSITY  OF  GLASaOW, 
LATE   FELLOW   AND  TUTOR   OP   MERTON   COLLEGE,    OXFORD 


VOL.  I 


NEW  YORK 
MACMILLAN   AND   CO. 

1893 


DEDICATED 

TO   THE 

REV.  BENJAMIN  JOWETT 

MASTER   OF   BALLIOL 

BT  AN   OLD   PUPIL   WHO   OWES  MUCH   TO 
HIS   TEACHING   AND   HIS   FRIENDSHIP 


Digitized  by  the  Internet  Archive 

in  2008  with  funding  from 

IVIicrosoft  Corporation 


http://www.archive.org/details/evolutionofreligi01cair 


PREFACE. 


These  volumes  contain  the  Gifford  Lectures  delivered 
in  the  University  of  St.  Andrews,  during  Sessions 
1890-91  and  1891-92.  I  have,  however,  introduced 
into  the  First  Course  two  additional  Lectures,  the 
Sixth  and  Twelfth,  which  seemed  necessary  to  com- 
plete the  argument. 

A  Course  of  Lectures  which  attempts  to  give  a 
general  view  of  so  great  a  subject  as  the  Evolution 
of  Eeligion,  without  going  into  detail  on  any  special 
question,  and,  so  far  as  possible,  without  using  the 
technical  language  of  philosophy,  must  leave  much  to 
be  desired  in  precision  and  completeness  of  statement. 
And  for  a  time  I  thought  of  using  what  I  had  written 
merely  as  materials  for  a  more  systematic  work.  But 
on  consideration  it  seemed  to  me  impossible  to  change 
the  plan  originally  adopted,  without  practically  writing 
a  new  book.     The  looser  form  of  Lectures  seemed  also 


viii  PREFACE. 

to  have  some  advantage  in  concentrating  attention  upon 
the  main  issues  apart  from  the  details  of  criticism, 
and,  at  the  same  time,  in  meeting  the  wants  of  readers 
whom  a  more  elaborate  treatise  might  have  repelled. 

In  preparing  these  Lectures  I  have  specially  had 
in  view  that  large  and  increasing  class  who  have 
become,  partially  at  least,  alienated  from  the  ordinary 
dogmatic  system  of  belief,  but  who,  at  the  same 
time,  are  conscious  that  they  have  owed  a  great  part 
of  their  spiritual  life  to  the  teachings  of  the  Bible 
and  the  Christian  Church.  To  separate  what  is 
permanent  from  what  is  transitory  in  the  traditions 
of  the  past  is  a  difficult  task  which  every  new 
generation  has  to  encounter  for  itself  In  the  present 
day  there  are  many  who  find  it  hard  to  understand 
themselves,  and  "the  signs  of  the  times";  nay, 
who  are  divided  between  two  feelings :  perplexed  on 
the  one  side  by  a  suspicion  that  in  clinging  to  the 
orthodox  forms  of  the  creed  of  Christendom,  they  may 
be  untrue  to  themselves,  and  may  even  seem  to 
assent  to  doctrines  which  they  have  ceased  to  be- 
lieve ;  and  checked  on  the  other  side  by  a  fear  that, 
in  discarding  those  forms,  they  may  be  casting  aside 
ideas  which  are  essential  to  their  moral  and  spiritual 
life.  What  they  want,  above  all,  is  some  principle  or 
criterion,   which   will   make   it   possible   for   them  to 


PREFACE.  ix 

distinguish  what  is  tenable  from  what  is  untenable 
in  the  opposite  claims  which  are  made  upon  their 
belief — claims  which,  on  both  sides,  they  cannot  help 
to  some  extent  acknowledging.  They  want  some 
Eirenicon  to  reconcile  them  with  themselves,  and  to 
enable  them  to  see  that  there  is  no  discord  between 
the  different  aspects  of  truth  which  their  own  ex- 
perience has  forced  them  to  recognise. 

In  dealing  with  such  difficulties,  in  the  present  day, 
we  are  greatly  assisted  by  those  better  methods  of 
historical  and  philosophical  criticism  which  are  making 
the  book  of  the  past  so  much  less  hard  to  read  than 
it  was  to  a  previous  generation ;  and,  above  all,  by 
the  great  reconciling  principle  of  Development,  upon 
which  these  methods  are  based.  That  principle  has 
for  the  first  time  put  into  our  hands  "  the  leaden 
rule  of  Lesbian  Architecture "  ^  which  can  adapt 
itself  to  all  the  inequalities  of  the  varied  and  com- 
plex structure  of  human  opinion.  It  has  made  it 
possible  for  us  to  understand  the  errors  of  men  in 
the  past  as  partial  and  germinating  truths ;  and  to  >J 
detect  how  ideas  grow  up  under  forms  which  are 
inadequate  to  them,  and  which  finally  they  throw  off 
when  they  have  reached  maturity.  It  has  made  it 
possible  for  us  to  give  a  more  satisfactory,  because  a 
^  Aristotle's  Ethics,  v,  10.  7. 


X  PREFACE. 

more  discriminating  answer  to  many  questions  which 
a  previous  generation  settled  with  a  simple  '  yes '  or 
'  no ' ;  to  stop  the  strife  of  warring  dogmatisms  by 
showing  that  the  question  is  not  one  between  absolute 
verity  and  absolute  untruth,  but  between  more  or  less 
of  each.  For,  so  long  as  we  have  our  life  "  anx  farhigen 
Abglanz," — in  the  varied  and  coloured  reflex  of  our 
partial  human  thought  and  feeling ;  so  long  as  our 
developing  thought  is  divided  as  it  is,  between  the 
truth  which  we  have  consciously  realised,  and  that 
which  we  are  only  striving  to  make  conscious,  so  long 
the  question  between  different  schools  or  stages  of 
thought  will  not  be  simply :  '  True  or  false  ? '  but 
'  How  much  truth  has  been  brought  to  expression, 
and  with  what  inadequacies  and  unexplained  assump- 
tions ? '  The  idea  of  development  thus  enables  us  to 
maintain  a  critical  spirit  without  agnosticism,  and  a 
reasonable  faith  without  dogmatism;  for  it  teaches 
us  to  distinguish  the  one  spiritual  principle  which  is  / 
continuously  working  in  man's  life  from  the  changing 
forms  through  which  it  passes  in  the  course  of  its 
history.  It  teaches  us  to  do  justice  to  the  past 
without  enslaving  the  present,  and  to  give  freedom  to 
the  thought  of  the  present  without  forgetting  that  it, 
in  its  turn,  must  be  criticised  and  transcended  by 
the  widenino-  consciousness  of  the  future. 


/. 


PREFACE.  xi 

The  plan  of  these   Lectures  is  as  follows.     After 
the   general   statement,  in  the  First   Lecture,  of  the 
problem   which   I   propose   to   discuss,   I   have   given 
in  the  next  six   Lectures  an  explanation,  as  clear  as 
I  could  make  it,  of  the   principles  upon  which   my 
view   of   Eeligion    and   of  its   History   is   based.     It\ 
is  in   this   part  of  the   book   mainly  that  difficulties 
are  likely  to  be  felt  by  readers  who  are  not  familiar 
wiuh    philosophical    discussion.       In   the   rest   of  the, 
course  I  have  described  what   I    conceive  to  be  the 
main  stages   in  the  development  of  pre-Christian  re- 
ligions.     In   doing  so  I  have  been  led — partly  by  a. 
desire    to    get    at    the  issues   that   are   of   most   im- 
portance, and   partly  by  the   limitations   of  my  own 
knowledge — to  pass  very  summarily  over  the  earliest 
stages   of  religious  thought,  and  to  dwell  mainly  on 
those  higher  forms  of  religion  which  may  be  still  said 
to  survive  as  recognisable  influences  in  modern  life. 
In  my   Second   Course  of  Lectures   I   have   confined  j, 
myself   almost    entirely   to    the    development   of   the 
Jewish  and  the  Christian   religion.      Of  course,  even 
these    could    only    be    dealt    with    very    briefly    and 
inadequately,  though  what   I   have   said   about   them 
contains   the  result  of  the  reflexions  of  many  years. 
"What,    however,    I    have    aimed    at    throughout    has 
been  rather  to  illustrate  a  certain  method  of  dealing 


xii  PREFACE. 

with  the  facts  of  religious  history  in  the  light  of  the 
idea  of  development,  than  to  exhaust  any  one  applica- 
tion of  that  method. 

Professor  Henry  Jones,  of  the  University  of  St. 
Andrews,  has  read  all  the  proofs  of  these  volumes, 
and  I  owe  to  him  many  suggestions  and  criticisms 
which  have  been  of  great  help  to  me.  I  have  also 
to  acknowledge  the  valuable  assistance  of  Miss 
MacLehose,  who  'has  prepared  the  Index  for  this, 
as  for  a  former  work  of  mine. 

EDWAED  CAIRD. 


The  University, 

Glasgow,  December,  1892. 


CONTENTS  OF  THE  EIEST  VOLUME. 


LECTURE   FIEST. 
The  Possibility  of  a  Science  of  Religion,  .        .  1 

LECTURE   SECOND. 
Different  Methods  of  Defining  Religion,  ...        36 

LECTURE   THIRD. 

The  Definition  of  Religion, 60 

LECTURE  FOURTH. 

The  Idea  of  the  Infinite  as  Defined  by  Professor 

Max  MtJLLER  and  Mr.  Herbert  Spencer,     .        .        84 

LECTURE   FIFTH. 

Mr.  Spencer's  Dualistic  View  of  the  Consciousness 

of  the  Finite, 114 


xiv  CONTENTS. 

FAOS 

LECTUEE   SIXTH. 

The  Idea  of  God  as  the  Beginning  and  the  End  of 

Knowledge, 145 

LECTURE  SEVENTH. 

The  Main  Stages  in  the  Evolution  of  Eeligion,      .      169 

LECTUEE  EIGHTH. 

The  Objective  Form  of  the  Earliest  Eeligion,         .       199 

LECTUEE  NINTH. 

Connexion  of  Eeligion  in  its  Earliest  Phases  with 

Morality, 233 

LECTUEE   TENTH. 

The  Eeligion  of  Greece, 260 

\\  LECTUEE  ELEVENTH. 

The]  Function  of  the  Imagination  in  the  Develop- 
ment of  Objective  Eeligion, 286 

LECTUEE  TWELFTH. 

The  Logical  Justification  of  Subjective  Eeligion,  .      316 


CONTENTS. 


LECTUEE  THIRTEENTH. 


The     Subjective     Eeligions  —  Buddhism     and     the 

Philosophical  Eeligion  of  the   Stoics,        .        .      348 


LECTUEE   FOUETEENTH. 
The  Eeligion  of  Israel, 377 


LECTURE  FIEST. 

THE  POSSIBILITY  OF  A  SCIENCE  OF  KELIGION. 

The  Progress  of  Science  due  to  the  Division  of  the  Sciences — The 
Advance  from  Simpler  to  more  Complex  Problems — The  conse- 
quent need  for  Specific  Principles,  and  the  Controversies  which 
arise  for  want  of  them — Special  diffimlties  in  the  case  of  the 
Moral  Sciences — The  Science  of  Religion — Defects  in  the  earlier 
Treatment  of  it — Reasons  for  the  New  Interest  in  the  Facts  of 
Religioxis  History — Ideas  necessary  to  explain  those  Facts — 
(1)  The  Unity  of  Mankind— J^/siior?/  of  this  Idea— Modern  Use 
of  it  in  History  and  the  Philosophy  of  History — (2)  The 
Development  of  Man — History  of  this  Idea — Modern  Scientific 
Use  of  it — How  the  History  of  3Ian's  Development  throws  light 
upon  the  Individual  Life — Special  Difficulties  in  applying  these 
Ideas  to  the  History  of  Religion:  (1)  because  Religion  is  the 
most  concentrated  Form  of  Man's  Consciousness  of  Himself  arid 
the  World:  (2)  because  of  the  Extreme  Variation  of  the  Forms 
of  Religion. 

The  work  of  science  is  to  find  law,  order,  and  reason 
in  what  seems  at  first  accidental,  capricious  and  mean- 
ingless, and  the  arduousness  of  that  work  grows  with 
the  complexity  and  intricacy  of  the  phenomena  to  be 
explained.  The  freer  the  play  of  difference,  the  harder 
it  is  to  find  the  underlying  unity :  the  fiercer  the  con- 

VOL.  I.  A 


2  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RELIGION. 

llict  of  opposites,  the  more  difficult  it  is  to  detect  the 
principle  out  of  which  it  springs.  Hence  arises  the 
necessity  for  scientific  method.  Unconscious  of  the 
greatness  of  the  task  they  were  undertaking,  the  first 
bold  adventurers  in  the  field  of  science  tried  to  solve 
the  whole  problem  of  the  universe  at  a  stroke,  and  to 
find  some  one  principle  which  would  account  for  every- 
thing. But  it  soon  became  obvious  that  the  citadel  of 
knowledge  was  not  to  be  taken  by  storm,  but  only  by 
advancing  parallel  after  parallel  in  a  long  and  patient 
siege.  In  order  to  gratify  the  desire  of  knowledge,  it 
was  necessary  in  the  first  instance  to  restrict  it ;  and 
the  earliest  and  most  secure  triumphs  of  science  were 
won  by  separating  off  some  comparatively  limited  sphere 
of  reality,  and  treating  it  as  a  world  by  itself.  Thus 
the  mathematician  was  content  to  deal  with  a  world 
which  had  been  emptied  of  everything  but  quantitative 
relations,  and  the  physicist  with  a  world  of  motion 
without  life.  And  it  is  just  because  they  thus 
narrowed  the  problem  that  they  succeeded  in  solving 
it.  Divide  et  imjjera.  The  chaotic  aspect  which 
things  at  first  present  can  be  overcome  only  by  the 
division  of  the  infinite  field,  and  the  man  of  science 
wins  success  mainly  by  confining  his  attention  to 
one  limited  sphere  of  investigation.  It  is  true  that, 
even  within  this  limited  sphere  he  finds  a  kind 
of  infinity.  Mathematics,  the  earliest  of  the  sciences, 
still  sees  an  endless  series  of  new  problems  opening  up 


A  SCIENCE  OF  RELIGION.  3 

before  it ;  and,  great  as  has  been  the  progress  of 
physics  in  modern  times,  it  has  raised  more  ques- 
tions than  it  has  answered.  But  though  the  field  of 
inquiry  opened  up  by  each  of  these  sciences  is  infinite, 
it  has  ceased  to  present  the  aspect  of  a  chaos :  it  is 
progressively  revealed  as  a  cosmos  by  the  application 
of  one  simple  principle.  The  general  nature  of  the 
difficulties  to  be  met  with  is  known,  and  also  the 
methods  by  which  they  can  be  overcome.  The  field 
is  not,  and  cannot  be  exhausted,  but  such  light  has 
been  thrown  upon  it,  that  no  room  is  left  for  the  fear 
that,  within  that  department,  the  progress  of  science 
will  ever  meet  with  any  insurmountable  obstacle,  or 
that  any  new  fact  which  may  be  discovered  will  throw 
its  conceptions  back  into  the  confusion  from  which 
they  have  emerged. 

From  this  it  follows  that  the  general  progress 
of  science  is  not  arrested  by  the  incompleteness  of 
its  achievements  within  any  particular  department. 
Although  it  is  not  possible  that  investigation  should 
ever  exhaust  the  sphere  of  mathematics  or  physics, 
it  can  advance  from  mathematics  to  physics,  and 
from  physics  to  biology,  with  the  security  of  a  general 
who  has  sufficiently  covered  a  hostile  fortress  in  his 
rear.  Hence  the  prejudgment  or  faith  that  there  is  no 
sphere  of  existence  which  is  exempt  from  the  reign 
of  law,  has  been  gaining  ground  with  every  new 
success  of  science;  in  spite  of  the  fact  that,  in  every 


4  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RELIGION. 

step  of  its  advance  from  the  simple  to  the  complex, 
the  difficulty  has  been  becoming  greater.  Men  of 
science  met  the  more  intricate  problem  of  biology 
with  the  prestige  of  their  success  in  the  fields  of 
mathematics  and  physics,  and  they  are  now  meeting 
the  still  harder  problem  of  anthropology  with  the 
prestige  of  their  certain,  though  incomplete,  victory 
in  biology.  If  Hegel  raised  the  cry  of  triumph  too 
soon,  when  he  asserted  that  "  the  secret  nature  of 
the  universe  has  no  power  in  itself  which  could 
offer  permanent  resistance  to  the  courage  of  science," 
yet  it  may  safely  be  said  that  the  faith  which  he 
expressed  rests  now  on  a  securer  basis  than  ever 
before,  and  that  it  is  continually  receiving  a  kind 
of  objective  verification,  which  it  received  in  no 
previous  age.  The  belief  that  in  some  sense  the 
world  is  a  rational  or  intelligible  system,  is  indeed 
one  which  has  never  been  entirely  wanting  to  man- 
kind, since  it  is  bound  up  with  the  very  nature  of 
the  intelligence ;  but  by  the  great  scientific  advance 
of  the  past,  and  especially  of  the  last  century,  it  has 
ceased  to  be  a  vague  anticipation,  and  become — at 
least  to  all  educated  men — a  living,  and,  we  might 
almost  say,  a  palpable  assurance. 

While  I  say  this,  however,  I  must  at  the  same  time 
point  out  that  the  faith  and  the  realisation  of  it  have 
to  contend  with  a  difficulty  which  seems  to  grow  as 
we    advance.       For    as    we    pass    from    mathematics 


A  SCIENCE  OF  RELIGION.  5 

to  physics  and  chemistry,  and  from  physics  and 
chemistry  to  biology  and  anthropology,  there  is  an 
increase  in  the  intricacy  of  the  problems  we  have 
to  solve.  Nor  is  this  due  merely  to  the  greater 
number  of  the  jDhenomena  to  be  explained.  It  is  due 
also  to  successive  changes  in  the  character  of  the 
phenomena  themselves,  and  it  points  to  the  need  for 
specific  principles  of  explanation.  The  transitions, 
from  motion  to  life,  and  from  life  to  sensation  and 
consciousness,  are  qualitative ;  and  the  endeavour  to 
extend  those  principles,  which  enable  us  to  explain 
the  lower  terms  of  the  series,  to  all  its  higher 
terms,  is  doomed  to  inevitable  failure.  Thus  the 
general  faith  that  the  world  is  an  intelligible  system 
requires  to  be  justified  in  a  different  way  in  every 
new  science.  Physics  and  chemistry  have  secrets 
which  cannot  be  unlocked  with  a  mathematical  key; 
nor  would  biology  ever  have  made  the  advance,  which 
in  this  century  it  has  made,  without  the  aid  of  a 
higher  conception  of  evolution,  than  that  which 
reduces  it  to  a  mere  "  mode  of  motion."  And  if 
the  effort  which  is  now  being  made  to  explain  the 
nature  and  history  of  man  is  to  succeed,  it  un- 
doubtedly will  require  a  still  higher  conception  or 
principle  of  explanation.^ 

1  Ultimately.,  every  object  requires  the  highest  principle  to 
explain  it,  at  least  for  a  philosophy  that  accepts  the  principle 
of  evolution.     But  of  this  we  are  not  here  speaking. 


6  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RELIGION. 

The    necessity    for    such    an    ascending    series    of 
specific  principles    is    sometimes    concealed    from  us 
by  the  fact  that  we  apply  the  general  terms  '  law  ' 
and  '  cause  '    to    every    kind    of  rational  explanation 
of  things,  without  considering  what  sort  of  law  and 
cause   is   meant.     But    to    say    that   there   is   a    uni- 
versal reign„of  law,  and  that  nothing  happens  with- 
out a  cause,  is   by   no   means    to    say   that    there  is 
one  kind  of  law  and    one   kind    of  cause  for  every- 
thing.     The  world  is  not  a  congeries    of    things  all 
on  the  same  level.     It  is  more  fitly  described  as  a 
hierarchy,  in  which  the  lower  orders  of  being  are  both 
presupposed  and  explained  by  the  higher.     If,  there- 
fore,   we    have    a    right,  as  we  rise   from   biology   to 
anthropology,    to    carry  with   us    the    faith    that    the 
new  sphere,  like  the  old,  is  under  the  reign  of  law, 
yet  we  must  expect  that  the  new  sphere  will  demanc^ 
a  new  law  or  principle  of  explanation.      And  if  we 
try  to  dispense  with  such  a  principle,  we  shall  find 
many  a   phenomenon  escaping  into   contingency,  and 
defying    all    our    efforts    to    find    a    place    for    it    in 
our   imperfectly   conceived   cosmos.      What   is   worse, 
the     attempt     to     subject     facts     to     an    insufficient 
theory  is    apt  to    awaken  a  revolt    against  the  very 
idea  of  law,  and  even  to  call  forth  a  denial    of    the 
possibility  of  any  rational    explanation    of   the    facts 
in  question.      And  the  only  result  that  can    emerge 
will    be    an    unprofitable    controversy   between    those 


A  SCIENCE  OF  RELIGION.  7 

who  would  solve  the  difficulty  by  means  of  an  in- 
adequate principle,  and  those  who  maintain  that  it 
cannot  be  solved  on  any  principle  whatever,  or,  in 
other  words,  that  we  must  be  content  with  a  faith 
that  cannot  be  rationally  justified. 

Such  reflexions  as  these  naturally  arise,  when  we 
consider  the  present  state  of  controversy  in  regard 
to  the  life  of  man,  as  a  rational  or  spiritual  being. 
In  taking  up  any  question  connected  with  this  sub- 
ject, we  are  confronted,  on  the  one  hand,  with  those 
whose  scientific  principles  are  too  narrow  to  explain 
the  facts  of  mind,  and  especially  that  moral  and  re- 
ligious consciousness  with  which  the  highest  pheno- 
mena of  mind  are  connected.  On  the  other  hand, 
we  are  confronted  with  those  whose  spiritual  ex- 
perience has  given  them  a  firm  intuitive  grasp  of 
these  facts,  and  who,  recognising  the  inadequacy  of 
the  explanation  offered,  set  themselves  against  all 
theory  as  tending  to  explain  the  facts  away.  On 
the  one  side,  we  hear  the  demand  that  the  life  of 
man,  like  everything  else,  should  be  brought  under 
law  and  interpreted  in  relation  to  its  causes  ;  but 
that  demand  is  presented  in  such  a  form  as  practically 
to  involve  the  reduction  of  the  moral  and  religious 
consciousness  to  an  illusion.  On  the  other  side, 
every  attempt  at  scientific  explanation  is  met  by 
an  assertion  of  the  freedom  of  man's  will  and  of  the 
immediacy    of    his    relation    to    the    Infinite    Being ; 


8  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RELIGION. 

but   this   assertion    of    man's    spiritual    nature    is    so 
interpreted  as  to  make  him  an  exception  to  the  order 
of  the  world,  a  being  who    is    not  subjected    to  the    \ 
reign  of  law,  and  cannot  be  brought  into  intelligible 
relation  with  other  natural  existences. 

But  there  is  little  to  choose  between  an  illusion 
and  an  unintelligibility ;  and  the  mind,  in  virtue  of  its 
native  confidence  in  itself,  rises  in  rebellion  against 
both.  The  nature  of  the  intelligence  and  its  whole 
past  history  are  our  warrant  for  rejecting  any  theory 
which  turns  man's  highest  consciousness  of  himself 
into  an  illusion ;  but  we  have  the  same  warrant  for 
asserting  that  it,  the  intelligence  itself,  cannot  be  an 
exception  to  the  general  system  of  the  world  in  which 
it  exists  and  manifests  itself.  It  is  impossible  that  in 
its  highest  life  reason  can  be  unfaithful  to  itself ;  but 
it  is  equally  impossible  that  that  highest  life  should  be 
irrational,  or  not  rationally  explicable.  To  say  that 
the  mind  is  successful  abroad,  but  that  it  loses  all  its 
power  at  home :  that  it  can  penetrate  the  secret  of  the 
world,  but  that  its  own  being  is  permanently  un- 
fathomable to  it,  is  to  put  it  at  variance  with  itself,  and 
to  deny  to  it  its  essential  attribute  of  self-consciousness. 
If  anything  is  intelligible,  it  must  be  the  movement  of 
the  intelligence  itself.  It  is  natural,  indeed,  that  as 
the  spiritual  life  of  man  is  the  most  complex  and 
difficult  of  all  subjects,  the  subject  which  includes 
and  transcends  all  others,  it  should  be  the  latest  to  be 


A  SCIENCE  OF  RELIGION.  9 

treated  on  an  adequate  method.  But  this  is  no  reason 
for  denying  that  it  can  ever  enter  upon  what  Kant 
calls  "  the  secure  path  of  science."  It  only  calls  upon 
us  for  increased  vigilance,  so  as  to  make  sure  that  we 
are  omitting  no  important  element  in  the  statement 
of  so  comprehensive  a  problem,  and  that,  in  our  at- 
tempts to  solve  it,  we  are  not  misled  into  using  prin- 
ciples which  are  inappropriate  or  inadequate. 

It  is  only  with  one  section,  though  not  the  least 
important  section,  of  this  subject  that  we  are  here  con- 
cerned. We  have  to  ask  what  success  has  attended, 
or  is  likely  to  attend,  the  attempt  to  give  scientific  ex- 
planation of  the  phenomena  of  man's  religious  life. 
In  other  words,  we  have  to  consider  by  what  method, 
and  upon  what  principle,  the  investigation  of  these 
phenomena  should  be  conducted,  and — so  far  as  is 
possible  in  a  short  course  of  lectures — to  show  the 
nature  of  the  results  to  which  a  course  of  investigation, 
so  conducted,  is  calculated  to  lead. 

The  science  of  religion  is  one  of  the  earliest  and 
one  of  the  latest  of  the  sciences.  It  is  one  of  the 
earliest :  for  philosophy,  which  is  the  parent  of  the 
sciences,  is  the  child  of  religion ;  and  the  first  efforts 
of  philosophy  are  spent  in  the  endeavour  to  find  some 
kind  of  rationale  for  the  religious  consciousness.  On 
the  other  hand,  it  is  one  of  the  latest :  and  that  for  a 
twofold  reason.  It  is  not  till  quite  modern  times  that 
the  necessary  data  of  the  science — the  facts  to  be  ex- 


10  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RELIGION. 

plained — have  become  fully  accessible;  and  even  if  they 
had  been  accessible  at  an  earlier  time,  they  would  have 
excited  no  intelligent  interest  in  the  absence  of  the 
ideas  and  principles  by  which  alone  it  is  possible  to 
explain  them.  For,  in  the  development  of  human 
thought  there  is  always  a  double  process,  by  which 
the  ideas  are  brought  to  the  facts,  and  the  facts  to 
the  ideas  ;  or,  rather,  these  are  two  factors  in  one 
process,  the  warp  and  the  woof,  which  are  con- 
tinually being  woven  together  into  the  web  of  man's 
intellectual  life.  The  growing  curiosity  which  leads 
men  to  investigate  fields  of  knowledge  hitherto 
neglected  or  even  regarded  as  unworthy  of  notice, 
is  the  result  of  the  development  of  man's  spirit, 
and  of  the  half-unconscious  action  of  the  new  ideas 
which  that  development  brings  with  it ;  and,  on  the 
other  hand,  these  new  ideas,  as  we  become  more 
definitely  aware  of  them,  not  only  give  new  interest 
to  the  facts,  but  enable  us  to  explain  them.  This 
is  a  view  of  our  intellectual  progress  which  avoids 
at  once  the  false  empiricism  that  sees  nothing  in 
growing  knowledge  but  an  accumulation  of  objective 
materials,  and  the  narrow  a  j^riori  philosophy  which 
regards  truth  as  born,  like  Athene,  from  our  brains, 
without  the  marriage  of  the  soul  with  the  world. 
It  is  undoubtedly  in  and  through  experience  that 
all  our  knowledge  comes,  and  looking  inward  with- 
out  looking   outward    is   a    process   which   has    never 


A  SCIENCE  OF  RELIGION.  \\ 

brought  any  gain  to  the  intelligence  of  man.  Nihil 
in  intcllectu  quod  non  2Jrius  in  sensu.  But,  on  the 
other  hand,  the  world  with  which  experience  makes 
us  acquainted  is  not  something  foreign  to  the  in- 
telligence, nor  in  seeking  to  understand  it  do  we 
need  to  lose  ourselves.  On  the  contrary,  it  is  just 
in  the  effort  to  understand  the  world  that  the  in- 
telligence grows  and  comes  into  possession  of  itself;  v^ 
and,  conversely,  its  understanding  of  the  world  is 
conditioned  by  its  own  growth.  The  world  cannot 
answer  unless  the  mind  question  it,  and  the  nature 
of  the  questions  is  at  every  step  determined  by  the  \ 
stage  of  development  which  the  mind  has  attained. 
Thus  it  may  for  a  long  time  remain  utterly  blind 
to  facts  for  which  it  is  not  yet  ripe ;  and  the  same 
facts  may  subsequently  become  its  central  interest, 
just  because  they  appeal  to  a  new  consciousness 
which  is  growing  up  within  it.  In  other  words,  they 
furnish  it  with  the  means  of  answering  a  question 
which,  by  its  own  development,  it  is  then  con- 
strained to  ask,  and  thus  supply  the  nutriment  it 
needs  for  its  further  growth.  The  dawning  idea 
makes  the  facts  interesting  and  intelligible,  and  the 
facts  make  it  possible  to  verify  the  idea,  and  bring 
it  to  explicit  consciousness.  Thus,  even  in  the  most 
empirical  process  of  science,  we  have  no  mere  im- 
porting into  the  mind  of  an  external  matter  alien  to 
its  own  nature,  but  a  satisfaction  of  native  impulses 


12  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RELIGION. 

which  enables  it  to  attain  a  clearer  consciousness 
of  itself.  It  would,  indeed,  be  strange  if  it  were 
otherwise.  We  can  take  into  our  bodies  only  what 
the  nature  of  these  bodies  enables  us  to  assimilate, 
— only  what  they  can  use  to  build  themselves  up 
into  their  matured  structure.  It  would  be  strange 
if  our  minds  were  receptacles  of  all  kinds  of  matter, 
without  reference  to  their  own  needs  or  their  own 
constitution.  The  mind,  indeed,  is  in  one  point 
different  from  the  body,  for,  in  a  sense,  there  is 
nothing  alien  to  it ;  it  has  a  universal  appetite  and 
can  assimilate  all  kinds  of  materials  of  knowledge.  - 
But  it  can  do  so  only  in  its  own  way  and  in  its 
own  time,  and  it  refuses  or  even  repels  any  infor- 
mation which  does  not  answer  its  own  questions,  and 
so  contribute  to  its  own  development. 

It  may,  therefore,  be  desirable,  before  entering 
upon  our  subject,  to  ask  a  preliminary  question. 
What  is  it  that  has  awakened  the  new  modern 
interest  in  the  science  of  religion,  and  has  given 
rise  to  the  persistent  attempts  which  are  now  being 
made  to  investigate  the  facts  of  religious  history 
in  all  times  and  places  ?  What  is  it  that  has 
made  us  carry  our  inquiries  beyond  the  Scriptures 
of  the  Old  and  New  Testaments,  which  are  directly 
connected  with  our  own  religious  life,  and  beyond 
the  classical  mythology,  which  is  immediately  bound 
up  with   our   literary    culture, —  that   has   set   to   our 


A  SCIENCE  OF  RELIGION.  ]3 

scholars  the  task  of  analyzing  the  Sacred  Books  of 
all  nations,  and  seeking  for  the  "key  of  all  the 
mythologies  "  ?  What  is  it  that  has  raised  the  folk- 
lore, which  was  formerly  left  to  children  and  old 
women,  into  an  object  of  keen  scientific  curiosity, 
and  led  an  army  of  careful  observers  to  record  with 
such  perseverance  the  crudest  superstitions  of  savages 
and  their  most  wayward  fancies  about  the  constitu- 
tion of  the  universe  and  the  powers  that  rule  over 
it  ?  The  folk-lore  has  not  ceased  to  be  childish, 
and,  though  it  may  carry  in  it  some  elements  of 
genuine  imagination — some  hints  at  a  poetic  idealisa- 
tion of  nature  which  are  worth  preserving — it  is 
not  for  these  grains  of  gold  that  we  turn  over  the 
infinite  heaps  of  sand.  Nothing  can  be  more  coarse 
and  repulsive  than  are  many  of  the  superstitious 
customs  of  savages ;  nothing  can  be  more  absurd 
and  irrational  than  most  of  their  ideas  as  to  the 
constitution  of  the  natural  and  the  spiritual  world. 
No  civilised  being  could  possibly  look  to  such  a 
source,  either  for  moral  guidance  or  intellectual  light. 
What  lends  them  their  interest  must,  therefore,  be 
their  bearing  on  some  new  question  which  we  are 
forced  to  ask ;  it  must  be  their  value  as  giving 
further  definition  or  illustration  of  some  principle 
which  we  seek  to  verify.  I  do  not,  of  course,  mean 
that  every  one  who  feels  the  impulse  to  investigate 
in  this   new   branch   of  inquiry   is    conscious   of  the 


14  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RELIGION. 

full  meaning  of  what  he  is  doing.  The  spirit  of  the 
time  enlists  many  servants  to  whom  it  does  not 
communicate  the  purpose  of  the  commands  it 
issues.  Hundreds  feel  the  pressure  of  a  new  desire, 
the  stimulus  of  a  new  curiosity,  for  one  who  asks 
himself  distinctly  what  it  is  that  he  wants,  or  why 
he  seeks  to  fill  his  mind  with  details  which  to  a 
previous  age  would  have  seemed  intellectual  lumber, 
as  useless  to  remember  as  the  scandal  of  a  village 
or  the  advertisements  of  a  daily  paper.  But  such 
unconsciousness  does  not  lessen  the  significance  of 
the  fact.  The  8aiiJ.(av  that  thus  possesses  men  is  not 
a  meaningless  impulse,  like  a  taste  for  collecting  books 
whose  value  lies  in  their  errata.  It  is  a  spiritual 
need,  an  intellectual  and  even  a  practical  want  of 
man's  spirit,  which  has  been  awakened  by  its  past 
growth,  and  the  satisfaction  of  which  is  necessary 
to  its  further  growth.  And  undoubtedly  it  is  well 
for  us  not  only  to  obey  the  spirit  of  the  time,  but 
also  to  ask  what  it  means,  to  try  to  understand 
the  interest  which  such  inquiries  awaken  in  us  and 
to  estimate  the  good  that  can  come  to  us  by  dis- 
covering the  answer  to  them.  For  this,  if  we  can 
attain  it,  will  tend  to  give  method  and  direction 
to  our  efforts,  and  it  may  to  some  extent  prevent 
us  from  wandering  into  paths  that  lead  to  nothing, 
or  attaching  too  much  or  too  little  importance  to 
particular  results. 


A  SCIENCE  OF  RELIGION.  15 

A    full    answer    to    this    question    cannot    yet    be 
given ;  but  it  is  possible  at  once  to  indicate  one  or 
two  points   which  lie  almost   on  the  surface.      First     ^ 
of  all,  we   may  observe   that   the   idea  of  the   unity  \^  ,. 
of  manhind  has  within   the  last  century  become  not 
merely  a  dogma,  but  an  almost  instinctive  presupposi- 
tion of  all  civilised  men,  and  that,  at  the  same  time, 
it   has    been   freed   from   the   theological   reservations 
and  saving   clauses  with   which   it  was  formerly   en- 
•  cumbered,  even  among  those  who,  in  a  sense,  accepted 
it  as  a  truth.      We  know  now,  in  a  way  in  which  it 
was  never  known   before,  that  humanity  is  a  genus 
which  has  no  proper  species ;  i.e.,  that  the  divisions   / 
between  men  are  as  nothing  in  comparison  with  the  \ 
fundamental   fact   of    self-consciousness    which    unites  ( 
them  all  to   each   other.      Ancient   society  was  built  ( 
on  the  principle  of  natural  kinship,  and  therefore  on 
a  principle  which  carried   with   it  tribal  or  national 
exclusiveness,  even  where  it   did  not  set  up  further 
barriers    between    the    members    of    the    society    by 
immovable  divisions  of  family  from  family,  rank  from 
rank,  and  caste  from  caste.      The  artificial  unity  of  the   | 
Eoman  empire,  however,  with  its  equal  justice  and  its 
rigid  conception  of  the  rights  of  the  individual  person, 
did   much   negatively   to    break    down   these   walls   of 
separation   between    Greek    and    barbarian,   Jew   and   ^ 
Gentile,    patrician    and    plebeian,    master    and    slave. 
And    Christianity    sought   -positively   to   knit   men    to- 


16  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RELIGION. 

gether  by  a  spiritual  bond  of  fellowship,  of  which  all 
men  were  regarded  as  capable.  It  is  true  that 
Christianity  for  a  long  time  hid  its  levelling  power 
in  the  very  excess  of  an  idealism,  which  treated 
worldly  distinctions  as  indifferent,  and  therefore 
allowed  them  to  subsist.  But  by  treating  all  such 
distinctions  as  accidental  differences  of  outward 
position  which  a  few  years  must  terminate,  and  by 
disregarding  them  in  the  order  of  the  church,  it  spread 
through  all  the  nations  which  it  reached  a  conscious- 
ness of  the  infinite  value  of  each  individual  soul  and 
of  the  comparative  unimportance  of  the  things  that  in 
this  world  divide  one  man  from,  or  set  him  above, 
another, — a  consciousness  which  in  the  long  run  must 
be  fatal  to  all  absolute  claims  of  superiority.  The 
belief  that  the  best  which  man  has  it  in  him  to  do  or 
to  be,  springs  out  of  that  which  is  common  to  all,  and 
therefore  that  the  highest  good  is  open  to  all,  is  fatal 
to  all  systems  of  privilege,  and  it  is  equally  fatal  to 
all  national  exclusiveness.  In  the  slow  progress  of 
humanity,  indeed,  there  is  always  a  long  way  between 
the  premises  and  the  conclusion,  between  the  ger- 
minating of  an  idea  in  the  religious  life  and  its 
manifestation  as  a  transforming  social  principle;  and 
it  may  work  for  a  long  time  unconsciously  as  such  a 
principle  before  it  is  explicitly  recognised  in  its 
universal  meaning.  Yet,  though  a  thousand  years  are 
as   one   day   in    the   secular   process   of  development. 


A  SCIENCE  OF  RELIGION.  17 

which  is  the  manifestation  of  the  divine  spirit  in  man, 
the  days  and  the  years  come  to  an  end,  and  the  fruit 
follows  by  an  inevitable  necessity  upon  the  seed. 

The  application  of  this  idea  to  the  case  before  us^ 
is  not  difficult  to   see.      The  hyper-idealism  of  early 
Christianity  refused  to  question  the  justice  of  slavery     ^ 
in   private   life   and   of  despotism   in   the    State.      It 
declared  that  the  powers  that  be  are  ordained  of  God, 
without  asking  how  they  had  been  established  or  how 
they  exercised   their  authority.      And   the   mediaeval 
church   was  inclined  in  its  asceticism  rather  to  em- 
phasise  than   to   criticise    the    division    between    the 
spiritual  and  the  secular  orders;  though  it  soon  found 
itself  forced  by  an  inevitable  logic  to  insist  that  the 
powers  of  the  latter  should  be  used  in  such  a  way  as 
not    to    interfere    with    the    higher    interests    of   the 
former;  and  in   time  this   claim  inevitably  grew  into 
the  demand  of  Hildebrand  that  the  world  should  be 
subjected     to     the     church.       But     the     Eeformation  f 
brought   with   it   a    better   solution   of  the   difficulty,  U 
leading,  as  it  did,  to  the  denial  of  the  division  between 
world  and  church  as  anything  more  than  a  distinction  " 
of  outward  order,  and  to  the  assertion  that_the  divine   \ 
principle  could  be  realised,  and  ought  to  be  realised,    \ 
in  the  life  of  the  laity  as  much  as  in  that  of  the    \ 
clergy,  in  the  State  as  much  as  in  the  Church.      In    | 
this  way  the  theological  limit  to  the  realisation  of  the    I  ^ 
divine  principle  in  man  was  broken  down.     The  new    ' 

VOL.  I.  B 


IS  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RELIGION. 

wine  of  Christian  cosmopolitanism  burst  through  the 
old  bottles  of  spiritual  and  secular  exclusiveness.  The 
divine  right  of  priests  in  the  church  and  of  a  royal 
or  noble  class  in  the  world  was  set  aside  for  the  divine 
right  of  humanity.  And  the  idea  of  a  unity  in  men 
\  deeper  than  all  racial  and  social  distinctions,  deeper 
than  all  distinctions  of  culture  or  even  of  religion,  ^ 
became  for  the  first  time  a  living  force. 

As  usual,  the  first  expression  of  this  truth  was 
extremely  one-sided.  The  cosmopolitanism  of  the  last 
century  carried  the  abstract  assertion  of  the  equality 
of  men  to  the  paradox  that  civilisation  itself  is  a 
moral  disadvantage,  and  that  the  genuine  voice  of 
humanity  is  to  be  heard  only  from  the  natural  man, 
"the  noble  savage."  But  the  irrational  consequences 
of  a  theory  which  treated  the  unity  of  human  nature 
as  the  negation  of  all  the  different  forms  in  which  it 
has  been  or  can  be  realised,  must  not  hide  from  us  the 
immense  gain  for  man's  intellectual  and  moral  life 
which  lies  in  the  rec"ognition  of  that  unity.  Looking 
at  it  in  the  former  respect,  with  which  we  are  more 
directly  concerned,  we  see  that  it  furnished  the  intel- 
lectual key  to  a  problem  which  the  increasing  inter- 
course of  mankind,  since  the  discovery  of  the  New 
World,  had  been  pressing  upon  men's  minds  with  ever 
greater  insistence.  The  conviction  that  God  has 
formed  of  one  blood  all  the  nations  that  dwell  upon 
the   earth — interpreted   as   meaning   that,   as   regards 


A  SCIENCE  OF  RELIGION.       ^  19 

that  which  is  deepest  and  most  important  in   human 
nature,  men  are   essentially  equal^supplied   for   the 
first  time  a  point  of  view  from  which  human  life  in 
all  its  heights  and  depths,  and  in  the  whole  range  of 
its   history,   could    be   brought   within   the   sphere   of 
science.      It   swept   away   at    once    the    literary  pre- 
judices which  carasetJ'-'cTassical  models  to  be  regarded 
as  the   only  humane    letters,  and   the  religious    pre- 
judices which   consecrated  the   history  of  the  chosen   \ 
people  and  of  the  early  Christian  "church  as  the  only 
sacred  history.      Above  all,  it  set  to  science  the  pro- 
blem how,  out  of  our_ common  humanity,  it  is  possible'  \ 
to   explain   the  almost  infinitely  diversified  forms  of   / 
culture,  literary,  social,  and   religious,  which  we  meet     > 
with  in  different  times  and  in  different  parts   of  the 
world.     If  we  are  "not^to  count  anything  human  alien"    ;  v 
to  us,  we  must  be  able  to  understand  every  such  form, 
not  merely  in  the  sense  of  gathering  together  the  facts 
regarding  it  and  observing  their  general  character,  or 
even  of  discovering  the  laws  of  their  co-existence  and 
succession ;  but  in  the  sense  of  throwing  ourselves  into 
them,  of  realising  the  states   of  mind   in  which  they 
arose,  the   process   of  thought   and  feeling   by  which 
they  grew,  and  the  connexion  of   the  results  to  which 
they  developed  with  our  own  life  and  thought.     In 
other  words,  this  principle  makes  us  conscious  that  we  ; 
have  not  solved  the  scientific   problem  suggested    by    | 
the  lives  of  other  men  till  we  are  able  to  live  them 


20  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RELIGION. 

over  again,  to  reproduce  their  movement  in  living 
imagination,  and  to  repeat  in  conscious  thought  the 
unconscious  logic  of  their  growth.  It  is  this  desire 
for  a  living  picture,  still  more  for  a  rationale,  of 
human  life  in  all  its  forms,  which  prompts  our  minute 
research  into  even  the  most  trivial  point  of  custom 
and  observance,  of  myth  and  doctrine,  in  ancient  and 
modern  nations.  It  is  this  which  makes  our  anthro- 
pologists at  once  so  greedy  of  facts  and  so  eagerly 
anxious  to  penetrate  through  the  mere  facts  to  the 
principle  that  explains  their  genesis.  We  want  not 
only  to  believe  in  the  unity  of  man,  the  identity  of  the 
spirit  of  humanity  in  all  times  and  places,  but  to  see  \ 
it ;  and  we  cannot  see  it  aright  unless  we  both  feel 
and  think  it,  unless  both  by  imagination  and  reason 
we  realise  how,  under  the  conditions,  we  might  our-  | 
selves  have  developed  into  such  ways  of  thinking  and  \ 
living.  It  is  this  impulse  to  revivify  and  reconstruct 
the  facts, — to  make  the  past  into  a  living  present, 
while  yet  we  understand  its  inner  meaning  in  a  way 
in  which  the  present  can  never  be  understood  by 
those  who  live  in  it, — it  is  this  that  characterises  the 
modern  scientific  spirit  and  differentiates  it  so  com- 
pletely from  a  mere  casual  and  external  curiosity. 
And  it  is  manifest  that  such  an  impulse  can  never  be 
satisfied  with  any  mere  empirical  collection  of  infor- 
mation, which  still  leaves  us  on  the  outside  of  that 
which  we  are  observing ;  nor,  indeed,  with  anything 


A  SCIENCE  OF  RELIGION.  21 

short  of  a  real  appreciation,  both  sympathetic  aud 
intuitive,  of  the  nature  of  the  process  by  which  the 
one  spirit  of  man  manifests  itself  in  all  this  difference 
of  forms,  and  through  them  all  is  continually  advanc- 
ing to  a  fuller  realisation  and  a  deeper  comprehension 
of  itself. 

And  this  leads  me  further  to  point  out  that  it  is 
not  merely  the  bare  idea  of  the  unity  of  man  which 
now  furnishes  the  guiding  principle  of  science  in  this 
department,  but  the  idea  of  that  unity  as  manifesting 
itself  in  an  organic  process  of  development — first,  in 
particular  societies,  and,  secondly,  in  the  life  of 
humanity  as  a  whole.  This  also  is  a  conception 
which  has  gradually  been  gaining  ground  ever  since 
the  beginning  of  the  Christian  era,  but  which  has 
for  the  first  time  taken  an  effective  form,  as  an  instru- 
ment of  science,  in  the  present  day.  The  favourite 
idea  of  classical  antiquity  was  not  the  idea  of  progress, 
but  the  idea  of  a  cycle  of  changes  in  which  departure 
from  the  original  unity  and  return  to  it,  or,  as  we 
should  say,  differentiation  and  integration,  are  not 
united,  but  follow  each  other.  This  idea  seems  to 
be  adopted  even  by  Aristotle.  The  constant  march 
of  the  Eoman  State  through  campaign  after  campaign, 
during  century  after  century,  to  the  empire  of  the 
world,  suggested  to  Livy  the  conception  of  a  process 
of  outward  growth,  which,  however,  seemed  to  him  to 
be  accompanied  by  inward  decay ;  for  the  power  and 


\ 


\ 


22  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RELIGION. 

wealth  which  patriotism  and  discipline  had  won  had, 
in  his  opinion,  proved  in  the  end  fatal  to  the 
virtues  which  gave  rise  to  them.  The  Hebrew 
Scriptures  carry  us  a  step  beyond  this:  for  pro-, 
phecy — in  so  far  as  it  was  not  mere  soothsaying, 
but  a  foresight  based  upon  insight — implied  a  discern- 
ment of  seeds  of  good  and  evil  in  the  present  which 
must  necessarily  ripen  to  a  harvest  of  greater  good  and 
evil  in  the  future;  and,  in  this  sense,  prophecy  was  just 
development  read  forward.  And  when  Christ  spoke 
of  his  own  ethical  doctrine  as  a  fulfilment  of  that 
which  potentially  or  in  germ  was  contained  in  the 
law,  and  at  the  same  time  represented  that  doctrine 
as  itself  only  a  grain  of  mustard-seed  which  was  one 
day  to  grow*into  the  greatest  of  all  trees ;  still  more, 
when  he  spoke  of  the  corn  of  wheat  that  was  to 
multiply  by  dying,  he  gave  a  clearer  expression  to  the 
idea  of  development  than  it  had  ever  before  received, 
and  even  perhaps  than  it  has  received  till  quite  recent 
times.  By  St.  Paul  this  thought  was  caught  up  and 
presented  in  a  more  imposing  though  less  suggestive 
form,  under  the  guise  of  a  great  providential  world- 
drama,  in  which  the  whole  history  of  the  Jews  is 
viewed  as  a  long  legal  preparation  for  the  new  era 
of  the  Gospel.  And  the  same  idea  appears  in  St. 
Augustine's  City  of  God,  only  with  the  additional 
suggestion  that  another  act  of  the  same  drama  is  found 
in  the  history  of  the  liomans,  by  whom  the  nations 


A  SCIENCE  OF  RELIGION.  23 

of  the  enslaved  world  were  brought  together  under  one 
universal  empire.  It  is  true  that  Augustine  sets  the 
"  two  cities  "  in  abrupt  antagonism  to  each  other,  and 
regards  the  secular  power  as  the  natural  enemy,  in 
conflict  with  which  the  church  had  to  show  its  higher 
spiritual  energy.  But  when  the  two  powers  were  thus 
connected  and  compared,  the  thought  could  not  fail  to 
arise  that  the  State  was  not  merely  the  opposite  of  ^ 
the  Church,  but  that,  on  the  contrary,  it  provided  the 
peaceful  sphere  within  which  alone  the  operations  of 
the  Church  were  possible.  Hence  arose  the  concep- 
tion of  the  two  "  preparations  for  the  gospel,"  an 
outward  and  an  inward  preparation — in  the  history 
of  Kome  and  in  the  history  of  Judaism  respec-  \ 
tively — which  culminated  in  the  union|of  the  Holy 
Eoman  Empire  and  the  Catholic  Church.  This  con- 
ception furnished  the  guiding  principle  of  what  we 
may  call  the  mediaeval  philosophy  of  history ;  and, 
as  such,  it  is  presented  to  us  in  the  great  poem  of 
Dante.  But  for  a  deeper  and  less  spectacular  ex- 
pression of  that  connexion  between  the  different 
phases  of  the  life  of  individuals,  of  nations,  and  of 
humanity,  which  we  call  development,  we  have  to 
wait  till  a  much  later  time.  The  intuitive  genius 
of  Vico  discerned  the  importance  of  the  idea  at  the 
dawn  of  the  modern  period ;  but  the  full  perception 
of  its  value  as  a  key  to  the  history  of  man  and  of 
the  world  was  reserved  for  the  end  of  the  last,  and 


^A 


24  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RELIGION. 

the  beginning  of  this  century.  It  was  then  that 
Lessing,  Kant,  and  Herder  gave  that  decisive  impulse 
under  which  the  principle  of  development  was  carried 
into  biology  by  Goethe,  Schelling,  and  many  eminent  ^ 
scientific  men,  while  Hegel  made  it  the  leading  idea 
of  his  philosophy,  subjected  it  to  a  more  penetrat- 
ing analysis  than  it  had  ever  before  received,  and 
applied  it  with  wonderful  insight  and  grasp  to  the 
political,  the  artistic,  the  religious,  and  the  philoso- 
phical history  of  man.  After  these  we  need  only 
refer  to  the  names  of  Lamarck  and  Comte  in  ^France, 
of  Darwin  and  Spencer  in  England,  and  of  Von  \ 
Hartmann  and  Wundt  in  Germany,  as  writers  who 
have  done  much  to  throw  light  on  various  aspects 
of  the  idea  and  to  give  it  new  applications.  We 
may,  indeed,  say  without  much  exaggeration  that 
the  thought  of  almost  all  the  great  speculative  or 
scientific  writers  of  this  century  has  been  governed 
and  guided  by  the  principle  of  development,  if  not 
directly  devoted  to  its  illustration. 

It  is  by  the  aid  of  this  principle  and  by  its  aid 
only,  that  the  other  idea  of  which  we  have  already 
spoken — the  idea  of  the  unity  of  mankind — can  be  x^ 
made  fully  intelligible  and  applical^le  to  the  facts  of 
history.  In  other  words,  the  unity  of  mankind  must 
for  our  purpose  be  interpreted  as  involving  not  only 
the  identity  of  human  nature  in  all  its  various  mani- 
festations  in   all   nations   and    countries,  but   also   as 


A  SCIENCE  OF  RELIGION.  25 

implying  that  in  their  co-existence  these  manifestations 
can     be     connected    together    as    different    correlated 
phases  of  one  life,  and  that  in  their  succession  they    i 
can    be    shown    to    be    the    necessary   stages    of    one  ^ 
process  of  evolution.      The  conception  of  development^ 
is  thus  a  corollary  which  cannot  be  disjoined  from  the)* 
principle  of  the  unity  of  man  itself.      For  if  it  be  true 
that  we  can  find  light  in   the  history  of  man  only  as 
we  throw  ourselves  into  it  and  live  it  over  again  in 
ourselves,  it  is  only  by  the  aid  of  the  idea  of  evolution 
that  we  can   bridge  over  the  gulf  between  ourselves 
and  the  men  of  an  earlier  and  simpler  stage  of  culture.     ^ 
Without  the  aid  of  this  idea  our  sympathies  will  not 
stretch  far  enough.      It  is,  indeed,  comparatively  easy 
for  us  to  recognise  the  identity  of  a  common   nature 
through  the  differences  of  language  and  custom  that 
separate  us  from  nations  like  the  modern  Germans  or 
French,  who  stand,  on  the  whole,  on  the  same  level  of 
civilisation  with  ourselves,  and  are  embraced  in  the 
same  general  spirit  of  the  time.      By  a  further  stretch 
of  effort  we  can  reach  back  to  those  previous  stages  of 
culture  that  still  survive  in  a  recognisable  form  in  our 
own  lives.     We  can  make  ourselves  citizens  of  Eome 
or   Athens,  because  in   literature   and   philosophy,  in    \ 
politics  and  laws,  Eome  and  Athens  still  live  with  us 
as  easily  distinguishable  influences.      And  our  religion 
still  preserves  so    much    trace    of  its   Jewish  source 
that  it  is  not  very  difficult  for  us  to  realise  in   some 


26  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RELIGION. 

measure  the  spirit  of  the  prophets  and  psalmists  of 
Israel.  But  when  we  are  required  to  widen  our  view 
still  farther,  and  extend  the  same  living  sympathy — 
the  sympathy  out  of  which  alone  true  knowledge  can 
spring — to  early  India  and  Egypt,  to  the  primitive  civi- 
lisations of  Babylon  and  Mexico  and  Peru;  still  more, 
when  we  have  to  include  in  our  idea  of  humanity  the 
lives  of  utterly  uncivilised  races  and  to  realise  the  first 
obscure  beginnings  of  religion  and  morality,  nay,  even  to 
reproduce  the  dawn  of  unconscious  reason  in  the  forma- 
tion of  language, — the  line  of  continuity  seems  to  be 
stretched  to  the  breaking-point.  And  it  must  needs 
break  but  for  the  help  of  the  idea  of  evolution,  which 
has  at  once  created  a  new  interest  in  the  earliest 
vestiges  of  human  life,  and  has  supplied  the  key  for 
their  explanation.  This  idea,  in  fact,  is  the  most 
potent  instrument  for  bringing  back  difference  to 
identity  which  has  ever  been  put  into  the  hands  of 
science;  and,  without  it,  it  would  be  impossible  to  hope 
for  a  real  understanding  of  the  facts  of  the  history  of 
man,  a  problem  which  in  its  complexity  and  difficulty 
includes  and  transcends  the  complexities  and  diffi- 
culties  of  all  the  other  problems  of  science. 

One  other  point  may  be  mentioned.  The  study 
of  the  historical  development  of  man,  especially  in 
respect  of  his  higher  life,  is  not  only  a  matter  of  an 
external  or  merely  speculative  curiosity ;  it  is  closely 
connected  with  the  development  of  that  life  in  our- 


A  SCIENCE  OF  RELIGION.  27 

selves.  For  we  learn  to  know  ourselves,  first  of  all, 
in  the  mirror  of  the  world  ;  or,  in  other  words,  our 
knowledge  of  our  own  nature  and  of  its  possibilities 
grows  and  deepens  with  our  understanding  of  what 
is  without  us,  and  most  of  all  with  our  understanding 
of  the  general  history  of  man.  It  has  often  been 
noticed  that  there  is  a  certain  analogy  between  the 
life  of  the  individual  and  that  of  the  race;  and  even 
that  the  life  of  the  individual  is  a  sort  of  epitome 
of  the  history  of  humanity.  But,  as  Plato  already 
discovered,  it  is  by  reading  the  large^letters  that  we-s^ 
learn  to  interpret  the  small.  If  in  the  biography 
of  each  of  us  the  history  of  mankind  is  repeated, 
yet  it  is  repeated  in  an  abbreviated  and  therefore 
confused  way ;  in  a  way  analogous  to  that  wherebyX. 
all  the  stages  of  animal  life  are  reproduced  in  the 
development  of  the  human  embryo.  But,  as  no  one 
could  have  discovered  what  these  stages  were  by  a 
mere  observation  of  the  growth  of  the  embryo,  as, 
on  the  contrary,  we  are  forced  to  interpret  the  stages 
in  the  life  of  the  embryo  by  reference  to  the  divisions 
of  the  animal  kingdom,  so  it  is  here.  The  history 
of  the  individual  mind  cannot  be  used  by  itself,  at 
least  in  the  first  instance,  as  a  key  to  the  history 
of  the  race,  but  rather  his  life  becomes  intelligible 
by  means  of  the  large  letters  in  which  its  stages  are 
written  in  the  life  of  mankind  as  a  whole.  We  first 
come  to  understand  the  obscure  struggle  of  different 


28  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RELIGION. 

tendencies  within  us,  when  we  regard  them  as  the 
reproduction  in  us  of  great  conflicts  of  race  and  creed, 
which  once  set  man  against  man  and  even  nation 
against  nation.  These  great  forces  are  also  warring 
in  us.  But  in  the  microcosm  the  arena  is  too  close, 
the  forms  of  the  combatants  are  too  indistinct,  for  the 
issues  to  be  clearly  seen,  unless  we  have  identified  \ 
them  under  the  more  conspicuous  shapes  in  which 
they  appear  in  the  macrocosm.  Hence  our  increasing 
knowledge  of  the  facts  of  history  and  of  the  ideas 
by  which  they  can  be  interpreted  is  not  merely  the 
addition  of  a  new  chapter  to  science,  but  it  throws 
a  new  light  upon  our  own  inner  life.  In  view  of 
the  ethical  and  religious  development  of  humanity, 
which  is  the  presupposition  of  our  own  spiritual 
life,  we  are  enabled  to  discern  more  definitely  the 
moral  and  religious  meaning  of  our  own  experience,^ 
and,  on  the  other  hand,  we  are  taught  to  regard 
our  own  lives  as  having  their  main  value  in  the 
contribution  which  they  make,  in  turn,  to  the  grow- 
ing life  of  humanity. 

To  sum  up  what  has  been  said.  We  have  seen 
that  the  studies  usually  embraced  under  the  name 
of  anthropology,  and  of  which  the  science  of  religion 
is  one  of  the  most  important,  have  risen  into  a 
prominence  and  attracted  an  attention  unprecedented 
in  any  previous  time ;  and  that  they  have  done 
so,    not    only  because    the   extension    of    our    know- 


A  SCIENCE  OF  RELIGION.  29 

ledge  of  the  world's  inhabitants  and  of  their 
history  has  supplied  the  necessary  data,  but  \^ 
because  the  progress  of  man's  intelligence  has 
brought  with  it  certain  ideas,  which  at  once  excite 
our  interest  in  such  inquiries,  and  furnish  us  with 
a  means  of  solving  the  difficulties  which  they 
bring  with  them.  These  are  the  ideas  of  the  S 
unity  of  man,  and  of  the  organic  connexion  of  life 
between  the  different  parts  of  the  human  family, 
and  also  between  the  different  stages  in  that  secular 
development  of  man's  spirit,  to  which  all  the 
various  forms  of  culture  in  all  the  nations  of  the 
world  ultimately  serve  as  contributions.  These  ideas 
we  do  not  put  forward  as  dogmas, — for,  indeed, 
there  are  many  difficulties,  both  in  their  analysis 
and  their  verification,  on  which  we  have  as  yet 
said  nothing, — but  we  point  to  them  as  indicating 
the  problems  with  which  at  the  present  time  it 
has  become  necessary  for  science  to  deal,  the  ques- 
tions which  by  its  own  development  the  human  spirit 
is  now  compelled  to  answer.  This  necessity  lies  in 
the  fact  that  it  is  only  through  a  deepened  conscious-  \ 
ness  of  the  world  that  the  human  spirit  can  solve 
its  own  problem.  Especially  is  this  true  in  the 
region  of  anthropology.  For  the  inner  life  of  the 
individual  is  deep  and  full,  just  in  proportion  to\ 
the  width  of  his  relations  to  other  men  and  things ; 
and    his    consciousness    of    what     he    is    in  himself 


30  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RELIGION. 

as  a  spiritual  being  is  dependent  on  a  compre- 
hension of  the  position  of  his  individual  life  in 
the  great  secular  process  by  which  the  intellectual 
and  moral  life  of  humanity  has  grown  and  is 
growing.  Hence  the  highest  practical  as  well  as 
speculative  interests  of  men  are  connected  with  the 
new  extension  of  science  which  has  given  fresh 
interest  and  meaning  to  the  whole  history  of  the 
race. 

Now,  these  remarks  have  special  application  to 
the  history  of  religion.  Without  as  yet  attempting 
to  define  religion,  or  to  give  any  precise  account 
of  its  characteristics,  we  may  go  so  far  as  to  say 
that  a  man's  religion  is  the  expression  of  his-- 
ultimate  attitude  to  the  universe,  the  summed-up 
meaning  and  purport  of  his  whole  consciousness  of 
things.  How,  and  how  far  he  rises  above  the  parts 
to  the  whole ;  how,  and  how  far  he  gathers  his 
scattered  consciousness  of  the  world  and  of  himself 
to  a  unity ;  how,  and  how  far  he  makes  anything 
like  a  final  return  upon  himself  from  all  his  fortunes 
and  experiences,  is  shown  more  clearly  in  his  re- 
ligion than  in  any  other  expression  of  his  inner 
life.  Whatever  else  religion  may  be,  it  undoubtedly 
is  the  sphere  in  which  man's  spiritual  experience 
reaches  the  utmost  concentration,  in  which,  if  at  all, 
he  takes  up  a  definite  attitude  towards  his  whole^ 
natural    and    spiritual    environment.      In    sliort,    it    is 


A  SCIENCE  OF  RELIGION.  31 

the  highest  form  of  his  consciousness  of  himself  in 
his  relation  to  all  other  things  and  beings  ;  and, 
if  we  want  a  brief  abstract  and  epitome  of  the  n^ 
man,  we  must  seek  for  it  here  or  nowhere.  But 
just  for  this  reason  the  problem  presented  by  the 
history  of  religion  contains  in  an  intensified  form 
all  the  difficulties  which  we  find  in  all  the  other 
aspects  of  man's  life.  All  the  complexity  and 
diversity,  all  the  opposition  and  conflict,  which 
make  it  so  hard  to  find  a  principle  of  law  and 
order  in  the  life  of  man  as  a  physical,  moral,  and 
intellectual  being,  reach  their  extreme  form  in  his 
religious  history. 

Connected  with  this  is  a  difficulty  which  has 
troubled  many  writers  on  the  science  of  religion — 
the  difficulty  of  finding  any  one  quality  or  charac- 
teristic which  is  common  to  all  religions ;  for  in  his 
religious  life  man  has  sounded  the  whole  gamut  of 
possible  forms  of  consciousness,  from  the  highest 
inspiration  to  the  lowest  superstition.  To  take  only 
a  few  instances  :  there  are  religions  of  terror  and 
religions  of  love,  religions  of  hope  and  religions  of 
despair,  religions  in  which  the  gods  seem  to  be  wor- 
shipped mainly  as  beings  who  can  help  or  hinder 
man's  effort  after  his  own  finite  ends,  and  religions 
in  which  he  is  called  on  to  make  absolute  surrender 
of  all  such  ends,  and  even  to  merge  his  very  life 
in     the     finite.      Whatever     element    be     named     as 


n 


32  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RELIGION. 

essential  to  religion,  it  seems  easy  to  oppose  a 
negative  instance  to  it.  For  instance,  Kant  tells 
us  that  "  without  a  belief  in  a  future  life,  no  re- 
ligion can  be  conceived  to  exist."  But,  to  mention 
only  the  most  obvious  facts,  the  early  Jewish  religion 
was  without  such  a  belief;  and,  if  some  idea  as  to 
a  life  beyond  the  grave  has  formed  a  part  of 
most  religions,  yet  there  are  many  in  which  it  was 
by  no  means  a  prominent  or  important  part.  The 
religions  of  classical  antiquity  were  for  the  most 
part  centred  in  the  domestic  or  the  national  life, 
and  the  immortality  thought  of  by  their  votaries  was 
the  immortality  of  the  family  or  the  state.  On  the 
other  hand,  there  have  been  nations,  such  as  the 
Egyptians,  for  which  the  concerns  of  the  other  world 
and  the  future  life  seemed  altogether  to  dwarf  the 
interests  of  the  present.  The  Egyptian  lived  among 
tombs  whose  size  and  splendour  reduced  into  insigni- 
ficance the  dwellings  of  the  living;  and  the  most 
characteristic  features  of  his  mythology  were  repre- 
sentations of  the  death  and  resurrection  of  nature 
in  winter  and  summer,  as  types  symbolising  the 
death  and  resurrection  of  man. 

Again,  in  its  attitude  towards  nature,  religion  has 
passed  through  every  phase  which  it  is  possible  to 
conceive.  At  one  extreme  we  have  the  mythology 
of  the  Vedic  hymns,  in  which  the  "  bright  ones," 
the  heavens   and  the  earth,   the   sun   and   the  moon. 


A  SCIENCE  OF  RELIGION.  33 

with  the  various  elemental  powers  of  storm  and 
wind,  are  the  only  distinctly  recognised  divinities. 
At  some  distance  from  this  stands  the  Jewish 
religion,  which  abhors  any  mingling  of  the  creature 
with  the  Creator,  and  treats  nature  not  as  the  mani- 
festation of  God,  but  rather  as  a  weapon  in  His 
hand,  which  He  has  made,  and  which  He  breaks  in 
pieces  when  He  has  done  with  it.  Lastly,  at  the 
opposite  extreme,  we  find  the  Buddhist  religion, 
treating  the  whole  objective  world  as  an  illusion 
from  which  it  is  the  highest  aim  of  the  devotee  to 
free  himself. 

Again,  the  religious  view  of  man  himself  and  his 
relation  to  the  Divine  Being  passes  through  a  similar 
series  of  kaleidoscopic  changes.  Sometimes,  as  in 
Greece,  man  is  the  one  finite  being,  whose  form  is 
transferable  to  the  divine,  and  the  gods  are,  above 
all,  regarded  as  the  powers  that  preside  over  the  life 
of  the  family  or  the  state.  Sometimes,  on  the  other 
hand,  man  seems  to  seek  his  gods  at  the  farthest 
possible  point  from  himself,  and  to  find  divinity  in 
plants,  in  animals,  in  almost  anything  and  every- 
thing rather  than  in  humanity.  And  anthropologists 
have  found  good  evidence  of  a  state  of  civilisation, 
in  which  men  could  think  of  kinship  as  a  sacred 
bond  only  when  they  regarded  it  as  a  participation 
in    the   blood    of    a    zoomoiyliic   or  phytomor^Mc  god 

or  totem. 

VOL.  I.  c 


S4  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RELIGION. 

To  take  one  other  illustration :  it  might  seem  that, 
if   anything    is   essential   to    religion,   it    is    a    belief 
in    the    objective    reality   of  God  as  apart   from  the 
religious  sentiment  of  His  worshippers ;  and  in  some 
forms    of   religion  we    even    find    Him  treated   as   a 
purely  external  power,  with  whom  no  inward  relation 
is  possible.     Yet  we  find  at  least  one  great  religion, 
that    of    Buddha,    which    begins    with    the     negation 
of   all    the  objective    gods    of   earlier   Hindooism,  or 
the     reduction     of    them     to     parts     in    the    great 
illusion     of    outward    existence,    and    which    at    last 
finds    the    divine,    if    anywhere,    only    in     the     self- 
negating  process  of  the  finite  mind,  and  the  Nirvana 
which  is  supposed   to   be   its   result.      Finally,   even 
within    the    compass    of    the    one    religion,    we    find 
something   analogous   to  all  these  forms,     for  Chris- 
tianity, in  the  course  of    its   history,  passes  through 
phases  which  recall  the  opposite  forms  of  polytheism 
and    monotheism,    of   pantheism    and    dualism.      We 
find  it  at   one  time  united  with  the  ascetic  morality 
of  the  cloister,  which  carries  the  negation  of  nature 
to  the  verge  of  self-annihilation,  and  at  another  time 
associated  with  an   ethics  which  idealises  the  natural 
desires  and  affections,  and  a  poetry  which  finds  God 
in  nature. 

These  variations  are  so  great  that  it  cannot  seem 

wonderful  if  some  are  inclined  to  deny  that  there  is 

/    any  unity  beneath  them ;    or  that  the   succession   of 


A  SCIENCE  OF  RELIGION.  35 

religions  is  anything  but  the  play  of  the  wayward 
fancy  of  man,  in  a  region  which  is  outside  of  the 
sphere  of  reason  and  experience.  Yet  even  so,  the 
problem  of  the  changes  of  religion  would  form  part 
of  the  general  problem  of  human  history.  Even  if 
religion  were  a  madness  of  humanity,  an  illusory  form 
of  consciousness  destined  ultimately  to  disappear,  there 
must  be  a  method  in  it  which  we  are  interested  to 
discover.  We  cannot  suppose  any  great  province  of 
the  life  of  rational  beings  to  lie  outside  of  the 
general  development  of  reason.  Even  atheism  or 
agnosticism  involves  a  definite  attitude  towards  the 
ultimate  problem  of  human  life ;  and  if  it  is  the 
highest  attitude  possible  to  man,  it  must  show  itself 
to  be  the  last  term,  or  one  of  the  elements  in  the 
last  term,  in  which  the  whole  process  of  develop- 
ment is  summed  up.  For  the  modern  ideas  of  the 
organic  unity  and  the  organic  evolution  ■  of  man, 
which  are  the  presuppositions  underlying  all  our 
investigation  into  the  history  of  humanity,  inevitably 
compel  us  to  seek  for  the  one  principle  of  life 
which  masks  itself  in  all  these  various  forms,  and 
which  through  them  all  is  striving  towards  the 
complete  realisation  of  itself. 


LECTUEE  SECOND. 

DIFFEEENT  METHODS  OF  DEFINING  EELIGION. 

Religion  and  the  Theory  of  Religion — Hoiv  to  define  Religion — 
Definition  to  he  sought  not  in  a  Common  Element  in  all  Religions, 
hut  in  a  Common  Principle  from  which  they  spring — Necessity  of 
this  according  to  the  Idea  of  Development — The  Explanation  of 
Religion  not  to  he  derived fromits  Earliest  Forms — First  Definition 
of  Religion  as  Conscious  Relation  to  a  Divine  Being — Objections 
to  it — Further  step  gained  hy  consideration  of  the  Historical 
Development  of  Religion — Meaning  of  the  Question:  How  Re- 
ligion is  possible. 

The  object  of  the  last  lecture  was  to  show  that  the 
spiritual  progress  of  man  brings  with  it,  on  the  one 
hand,  a  new  kind  of  interest  in  the  history  of  that 
progress,  and,  on  the  other  hand,  new  ideas  which, 
in  explaining  the  facts  of  history,  derive  from 
them  their  own  exposition  and  verification.  The 
ideas  of  the  organic  unity  of  mankind,  and  of  the 
organic  process  of  development  in  which  that  unity 
is  manifested,  have  given  scientific  value  to  many 
objects  and  events  which  formerly  were  matters  of 
mere  antiquarian  interest.  Eor  in  the  light  of  these 
ideas   the   facts   of  history   cease    to    be   barren,   and 


METHODS  OF  DEFINING  RELIGION.  37 

become  a  potent  help  in  solving  some  of  the  highest 
problems  of  religion  and  morality.  They  enable  us  to 
read  the  secrets  of  our  own  lives  in  the  large  letters 
of  the  life  of  the  race,  and  so,  by  reflexion,  to  under- 
stand the  spiritual  forces  that  are  working  within  us. 
Especially  is  this  the  case  with  the  great  problem  of 
religion,  in  which,  if  anywhere,  the  meaning  and 
interest  of  our  spiritual  life  is  summed  up  and  con- 
centrated. 

It  is  true  that  it  is  one  thing  to  have  a  religion, 
and  quite  another  thing  to  understand  what  religion 
is  ;  still  more,  to  trace  out  the  full  meaning  of 
religion  in  the  light  of  its  history.  Nor  can  it  be 
said  that  the  former  is  in  any  direct  way  dependent 
upon  the  latter.  Here,  as  elsewhere,  theory  comes 
after  the  fact  which  it  seeks  to  explain ;  and  it 
would  seem  to  be  as  absurd  to  attempt  to  nourish 
religious  life  on  a  theory  of  its  own  nature,  as  to 
try  to  feed  the  body  with  a  treatise  on  physiology. 
Yet  this  analogy  should  not  be  pressed  too  far ; 
for  even  in  its  earliest  stages  religion  is  a  process 
'  which  involves  consciousness ;  and  although  con- 
sciousness is  not  in  the  first  instance  reflective,  yet 
in  the  course  of  its  development  it  inevitably  becomes 
so.  The  elevation  of  the  soul  to  God,  and  the  sur- 
render of  the  will  to  the  inspiration  which  the  con- 
sciousness of  God  brings  with  it,  may  take  place  with- 
out  any  need   being  felt  for   a   logical   proof  of  the 


38  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RELIGION. 

existence  of  the  Divine  being,  or  for  a  criticism  of  the 
process  whereby  the  idea  of  such  a  being  is  awakened 
and  developed  within  us.  They  may  take  place  even 
apart  from  any  attempt  to  distinguish  the  elements 
which  enter  into  our  thought  of  God,  or  to  determine 
their  relation  to  each  other.  But  inevitably,  insensibly, 
in  the  growth  of  the  human  spirit,  a  time  comes  when 
such  questions  must  begin  to  trouble  it,  and  constrain 
it  to  advance  from  religion  to  theology,  or  as  mediaeval 
writers  put  it,  from  vcncratio  to  deledatio,  from  ex- 
perience and  feeling  to  reflexion  and  self-consciousness. 
In  our  day  especially,  when  the  conceptions  of  science 
and  philosophy  have,  in  so  large  measure,  penetrated 
into  the  general  consciousness  of  men,  and  transformed 
their  whole  view  of  themselves  and  the  world,  it  is 
almost  impossible  for  any  one  to  dwell  permanently 
in  the  region  of  simple  faith,  and  to  escape  altogether 
the  questionings  of  reflexion.  And  he  who  has  once 
listened  to  these  questionings  can  never,  without  some 
attempt  to  answer  them,  regain  the  intuitive  certainty 
of  God  which  he  has  lost.  The  spirit  of  the  time 
compels  us  to  build  our  temple  with  arms  in  our 
hands,  to  maintain  our  religious  life  amid  the  jar  of 
controversy,  and  with  the  consciousness  of  many  difli- 
culties  which  demand,  but  cannot  always  obtain  from 
us,  a  rational  solution.  The  advance  of  science,  of 
historical  investigation,  of  philosophical  criticism,  has 
forced  us  to  realise  how  much  is  required  for  the  evi- 


METHODS  OF  DEFINING  RELIGION.  39 

dence  of  any  idea  so  far-reaching  as  a  religious  prin- 
ciple must  necessarily  be ;  it  has  made  us  mistrustful 
of  the  easy  methods  in  which  an  earlier  age  was  con- 
tent to  find  the  proof  of  a  foregone  conclusion.  The 
external  scaffolding  on  which  religious  belief  formerly 
rested  has  in  great  part  fallen  away,  and  we  are 
obliged  to  look  for  a  natural  and  rational  basis  for 
many  of  those  convictions  which  were  then  propped 
up  by  adventitious  supports.  In  this  way  religion 
and  the  theory  of  religion  have  been  brought  into 
closer  relations  than  they  ever  before  needed  to  main- 
tain, and  there  is  a  more  direct  reaction  of  the  latter 
upon  the  former.  This,  no  doubt,  has  its  dangers ; 
dangers  of  which  we  are  made  painfully  conscious  in 
the  inadequate  and  futile  discussion  of  great  questions 
which  invade^  even  our  newspapers  ;  but  it  has  com- 
pensating advantages.  For,  if  the  discussions  of  the 
market-place  are  apt  to  be  superficial,  the  philosophy 
which  is  not  obliged  to  explain  itself  outside  of  the 
school  is  prone  to  become  scholastic,  and  to  lose  all 
vital  relation  to  that  immediate  experience  of  which 
it  claims  to  be  the  higher  interpretation  and  vindi- 
cation. 

In  seeking  to  find  such  an  interpretation  and 
vindication  of  the  religious  consciousness,  it  seems 
necessary  to  start,  if  not  with  an  exact  definition, 
at  least  with  some  general  idea  of  the  nature  of 
religion,  which  may  enable  us  to  mark  out  the  limits 


40  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RELIGION. 

of  the  field  we  have  to  survey.  But,  owing  to  the 
immense  range  of  variation  in  the  phenomena  usually 
classed  as  religious,  it  is  no  easy  task  to  do  even  so 
much  as  this.  For  what  idea  of  religion  can  be 
found  which  will  not  fail  to  include  some  of  the 
many  species  of  religions  enumerated  at  the  end  of 
the  last  lecture  ?  The  question  would  be  unanswer- 
able, if  we  were  obliged — as  many  writers  on  this 
subject  have  supposed  they  were  obliged — to  look 
for  some  one  quality  common  to  all  religions  as  the 
basis  of  our  definition.  For  such  a  quality,  if  it 
could  be  found,  would  be  something  so  vague  and 
abstract,  that  little  or  nothing  could  be  made  of  it. 
The  truth,  however,  is  that  such  a  definition  would 
not  supply  what  in  this  case  we  want.  The  different 
religions  are  not  merely  co-ordinate  species  varying, 
one  in  this  direction,  the  other  in  that,  from  a 
single  general  type.  They  are,  in  many  cases  at 
least,  to  be  regarded  rather  as  successive  stages  in 
one  process  of  development,  in  which  the  later  in- 
clude and  presuppose  the  earlier.  As  there  is  little 
to  be  gained  by  asking  what  is  common  to  the  bud, 
the  leaf,  the  flower,  and  the  fruit  of  the  tree,  so 
there  is  little  to  be  gained  by  asking  what  is  common 
to  the  Vedic  Polytheism  of  early  India,  to  the  later 
Brahmanic  system  and  to  the  religion  of  Buddha,  if 
these,  as  we  find  to  be  the  case,  are  only  different 
stages  in  one  great  movement  of  religious  life.      There 


METHODS  OF  DEFINING  RELIGION.  41 

is  little  to  be  gained  by  considering  what  is  common 
to  Judaism  and  to  Christianity,  when  the  latter 
springs  from  a  soil  prepared  by  the  former.  And 
even  those  religions  which  have  no  such  direct 
historical  connexion,  and  which  therefore  it  would 
be  difficult  to  regard  as  prior  and  posterior  stages 
of  the  same  course  of  development,  are  nevertheless 
not  strictly  co-ordinate  with  each  other.  The  Greek, 
the  Latin,  the  Celtic,  and  the  German  forms  of  the 
Aryan  mythology  are  not  reciprocally  exclusive  logical 
species  which  are  united  only  by  a  common  generic 
quality,  but  rather  members  of  one  family,  each  of 
which  emphasises  an  element  that  is  present  but 
latent  in  all  the  others.  And  the  same  truth  is 
illustrated  on  a  still  wider  scale  if  we  go  beyond 
special  religions  to  such  general  ideal  types  of  religion 
as  are  indicated  by  the  terms  Polytheism,  Pantheism, 
and  Monotheism ;  for  these  are  not  really  species  of 
religion  which  are  co-ordinate  with  each  other,  but 
.phases  of  religious  belief,  which  represent  different 
[stages  in  the  development  of  the  idea  of  religion. 
In  the  sequel,  an  attempt  will  be  made  to  show  that 
Pantheism  is  simply  the  culminating  phase  of  Poly- 
theism, and  that  Monotheism,  in  the  strict  sense  of 
the  term,  always  arises  in  direct  opposition  to  both. 
If  this  view  be  correct,  it  would  be  idle  to  seek  for 
any  common  element  in  these  different  forms ;  or,  if 
we   found  it,  to  suppose   that    in   it    we   had   a   real 


42  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RELIGION. 

principle  of  unity,  by  reference  to  which  we  might 
classify  the  religions,  and  determine  their  relations 
to  each  other.  Finally,  any  definition  which  we 
might  derive  from  the  analysis  and  comparison  of 
the  higher  forms  of  religion  would  be  too  lofty  and 
comprehensive  to  apply  to  the  superstitions  of  savages; 
yet  in  these  superstitions  we  recognise  the  obscure 
beginnings  of  religious  experience,  and  they  could  not 
be  left  out  of  account  in  any  definition  of  religion. 
Nay,  if  the  different  religions  be  stages  in  a  single 
development,  it  is  just  in  such  elementary  phenomena, 
if  anywhere,  that  we  must  find  the  common  element 
of  which  we  are  in  search ;  for,  ex  hypothcsi,  the 
simplest  religion  must  still  contain  the  essence  of 
religion,  and  it  will  contain  little  or  nothing  else  to 
disguise  that  essence  from  us.  Thus  it  appears  that 
the  search  for  a  common  element  in  all  religions  is 
entirely  misleading.  If  it  yielded  any  result  at  all, 
it  would  constrain  us  to  define  religion  in  terms  of 
the  lowest  possible  form  of  it :  and  it  could  not  yield 
even  so  much  as  this,  unless,  in  the  order  of  develop- 
ment, each  successive  religion  at  once  included  and 
transcended  the  previous  one.  If,  on  the  other  hand, 
a  religion  ever  arose  by  movement  of  recoil  against 
an  earlier  religion — and  this  seems  actually  to  be 
the  case  with  Buddhism  in  relation  to  Brahmanism 
— then  the  clue  of  the  common  element  would  be 
entirely    lost    to    us,    and    we    should    be   obliged    to 


METHODS  OF  DEFINING  RELIGION.  4S 

reject    from   our   definition    even    the    elements    that 
appear  in  its  earliest  form.^ 

What,  however,  we  really  want  in  a  definition 
of  religion  is  no  such  swnimum  genus,  reached  by 
omission  of  all  that  is  characteristic  of  the  species^ 
but  a  germinative  principle,  a  principle  of  the 
genesis  of  religions.  Such  a  principle  will  reveal 
itself  not  so  much  in  each  religion  taken  separately 
as  in  all  the  religions  contemplated  as  stages  in  a 
process ;  and,  most  of  all,  in  the  transitions  of 
thought  whereby  one  religion  develops  out  of  an- 
other, or  asserts  itself  in  conflict  acjainst  it.  Or,  if 
we  can  expect  to  find  it  revealed  in  any  one  religion, 
it  must  be  in  the  highest  rather  than  the  lowest. 
For  a  principle  of  development  necessarily  mani- 
fests itself  most  clearly  in  the  most  mature  form  of 
that  which  develops.  As  we  take  our  definition  of 
man,  not  from  the  embryo  or  the  infant  but  from 
the  grown   man,   who   first   shows    what   was   hidden 

^It  is,  of  course,  still  open  to  any  one  to  maintain  that, 
dialectically,  the  later  stage  in  a  development  includes  the 
earlier,  although  it  is  related  thereto  only  in  the  way  of  opposi- 
tion or  negation  :  in  other  words,  it  implies  and  pre-supposes 
it  as  a  simpler  or  more  elementary  stage  of  thought.  But  this 
idea,  to  which  we  shall  have  to  return  in  the  sequel,  cannot 
help  any  one  who  is  seeking  to  define  religion  by  reference  to 
a  supposed  common  element,  as  distinguished  from  a  common 
principle,  in  all  religions,  and  who  therefore  regards  the  diflFerent 
religions  simply  as  reciprocally  exclusive  logical  species  falling 
under  one  abstract  eenus. 


44  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RELIGION. 

in  both ;  so,  in  like  manner,  in  defining  religion, 
we  must  look  to  Christianity  rather  than  to  Judaism, 
to  Buddhism  rather  than  to  the  Vedic  Polytheism,  V 
and  to  all  the  forms  of  worship  which  we  find 
among  civilised  peoples  rather  than  to  the  super- 
stitions of  savages.  When,  indeed,  we  turn  back 
from  the  developed  organism  to  the  embryo,  from 
the  man  to  the  child,  we  find  that  a  study  of  the 
process  of  genesis  casts  no  little  light  upon  the 
nature  of  the  being  which  is  its  result.  The  man 
becomes  in  a  higher  sense  intelligible,  when  we 
trace  him  back  to  the  child.  But,  primarily  and 
in  the  first  instance,  it  is  the  developed  organism 
that  explains  the  germ  from  which  it  grew,  and, 
without  having  seen  the  former,  we  could  have 
made  nothing  of  the  latter.  No  examination  of  the 
child  could  enable  us  to  prophesy  the  man,  if  we 
had  not  previously  had  some  experience  of  mature 
manhood ;  still  less  would  an  examination  of  the 
seed  or  the  embryo  reveal  to  us  the  distinct 
lineaments  of  the  developed  plant  or  animal  or 
man.  Nor  would  our  insight  be  greatly  helped 
by  a  knowledge  of  the  environment  in  which  the 
process  of  development  was  to  take  place.  And  the 
same  is  true  of  religion.  It  is  the  full  growth 
and  expansion  of  this  mighty  tree,  under  whose 
shadow  the  generations  of  men  have  rested,  that 
enables    us     to    understand    its    obscure    beafinnimrs. 


METHODS  OF  DEFINING  RELIGION.  45 

when  it  was  "  the  least  of  all  seeds,"  Develop- 
ment is  not  simply  the  recurrence  of  the  same 
effects  in  similar  circumstances,  not  simply  the 
maintenance  of  an  identity  under  a  variation  deter- 
mined by  external  conditions.  Hence  it  is  impos- 
sible, from  the  phenomena  of  one  stage  of  the  life 
of  a  developing  being,  to  derive  laws  which  will 
adequately  explain  the  whole  course  of  its  existence. 
The  secret  of  the  peculiar  nature  of  such  a  being 
lies  just  in  the  way  of  regular  transition  in  which, 
by  constant  interaction  with  external  influences,  it  ^ 
widens  the  compass  of  its  life,  unfolding  continually 
new  powers  and  capacities — powers  and  capacities 
.  latent  in  it  from  the  first,  but  not  capable  of  being 
foreseen  with  any  definiteness  by  one  who  had  seen 
only  the  beginning.  It  follows  that,  in  the  first 
instance  at  least,  we  must  read  development  hack- 
ward  and  not  forward,  we  must  find  the  key  to 
the  meaning  of  the  first  stage  in  the  last ;  though 
it  is  quite  true  that,  afterwards,  we  are  enabled 
to  throw  new  light  upon  the  nature  of  the  last, 
to  analyse  and  appreciate  it  in  a  new  way,  by 
carrying  it  back  to  the  first.  We  may  derive  an 
illustration  of  this  characteristic  of  develoj)ment  from 
the  idea  of  dcvclojnnent  itself;  for  the  idea  of  de- 
velopment is  one  of  the  latest  ideas  whose  meaning 
and  value  has  been  brought  to  light  by  the  progress 
of  man,   and   it   is   itself    the   much    wanted   key   to 


\ 


46  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RELIGION. 

the  history  of  that  progress.  If  it  has  to  some 
extent  ceased  to  be  true  that,  as  Goethe  says  in 
the  Faust,  the  "  history  of  the  past  is  a  book  with 
seven  seals,"  and  that  what  the  historian  discovers 
to  be  its  spirit  is  only  the  spirit  of  the  historian 
himself,  '  dcs  Hcrrcn  eigner  Geist,'  this  is  due,  more 
than  anything  else,  to  the  fact  that  the  idea  of 
■development  has  enabled  us  to  recognise  the 
identical  spirit  of  man  in  all  the  enormous  cycle 
of  changes  through  which  it  has  passed,  yet  with- 
out suppressing  or  disguising  the  differences  that 
separate  men  from  each  other  in  different  ages,  and 
under  different  social  conditions. 

It  follows  from  these  considerations  that,  in  seeking 
for  a  definition  of  religion,  we  are  not  to  look  for  a 
common  element  in  all  religions.  For,  as  we  have 
seen,  such  a  way  of  defining  would  force  us  at  once  to 
raise  the  difficult,  or  rather,  impossible  question,  "  what 
is  the  lowest  kind  of  spiritual  experience  which  we 
■can  think  worthy  of  the  name  of  a  religion  ? "  And 
any  possible  answer  to  that  question  would  cut  across 
the  line  of  development  by  an  arbitrary  determination 
of  the  limits  within  which  we  shall  confine  the  mean- 
ing of  the  word.  What  we  have  to  look  for,  on  the 
contrary,  is  a  principle  which  is  bound  up  with  the 
nature  of  man,  and  which,  therefore,  manifests  itself 
in  all  stages  of  his  development.  A  definition  of 
religion  in  this  sense,  if  we  can  attain  it,  will  express 


METHODS  OF  DEFINING  RELIGION.  47 

an  idea  which  is  fully  realized  only  in  the  final  form 
of  religion,  while  in  the  earlier  stages  it  can  be  seen 
only  obscurely,  and  in  the  lowest  and  earliest  it  might 
escape  us  altogether  but  for  the  light  thrown  back 
upon  it  by  that  which  has  arisen  out  of  it.  It  will 
thus  enable  us  to  cast  the  light  of  the  present  upon 
the  past,  and  to  explain  man's  first  uncertain  efforts  to 
name  and  to  realise  the  divine,  in  the  light  of  the 
clearer  consciousness  and  more  distinct  utterance  of  a 
later  age.  It  will  permit  us  to  trace  back  the  religious 
life  to  its  earliest  and  most  elementary  forms,  and  yet 
it  will  exempt  us  from  the  vain  effort  to  extract  from 
these  forms  an  adequate  idea  either  of  the  religious 
consciousness  or  of  its  object. 

We  may  illustrate  this  way  of  looking  at  the  subject 
by  reference  to  a  misconception  which  has  greatly 
interfered  with  the  impartial  consideration  of  the 
development  of  religion.  There  is  a  common  prejudice 
— a  hope  on  the  one  side,  a  fear  on  the  other — that, 
if  the  history  of  religion  be  brought  under  the  idea 
of  development,  religion  itself  will  be  explained  away 
by  reducing  it  to  its  lowest  terms.  Such  a  hope  and 
such  a  fear  equally  arise  from  an  insufficient  apprehen- 
sion of  the  nature  of  development,  and  of  the  sense 
in  which  what  goes  before  in  development  can  be  said 
to  account  for  what  follows.  Causation,  indeed,  is  a 
word  of  ambiguous  meaning,  and  it  might  lead  to 
misunderstanding   if  we   were    simply  to   assert   that 


48  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RELIGION. 

"  development  is  not  causation " ;  for  this  might  be  , 
taken  to  mean  that  there  is  only  an  arbitrary  and 
external  connexion  between  the  successive  stages  in 
it.  But,  this  misunderstanding  being  precluded,  we 
may  undoubtedly  lay  it  down  that  the  phenomena  of 
the  beginning  of  a  life  are  not  to  be  regarded  as  the 
cmises  of  the  phenomena  that  follow ;  but  that  the 
former  are  imperfect  manifestations  of  a  principle 
which  is  more  completely  manifested  in  the  latter.^ 
Beneath  the  most  elementary  phenomena  of  life  there 
is  a  unity,  which  is  not  cxhcmstcd  in  them  ;  a  unity 
which  grows  by  subordinating  the  environment  to 
itself,  and  which,  through  all  its  stages,  maintains 
its  identity  with  itself,  while  it  enlarges  its  sphere 
of  manifestation.  This  unity,  therefore,  is  the  more  ^ 
clearly  manifested  the  further  we  advance  along  the 
line  of  development.  Hence  we  cannot  from  an 
examination  of  the  first  stage  of  a  development 
pronounce  any  final  judgment  either  for  good  or  ill 
upon  the  later  results  of  it. 

To  apply  this  to  the  case  in  point.  It  has  been 
maintained  on  the  one  side,  and  disputed  on  the  other, 
that  religion  develops  out  of  a  belief  in  ghosts,  which 
is  suggested  by  the  remembered  or  imaginary  forms 
that  jDresent  themselves  to  us  in  dreams ;  and  those 

1  From  a  slightly  diiferent  point  of  view  we  might  say  that  the 
explanation  of  facts  of  development  by  their  causes  is  always  of 
o-reat  value,  but  that  it  can  never  be  a,  final  explanation  of  them. 


METHODS  OF  DEFINING  RELIGION.  49 

who  have  maintained,  as  well  as  those  who  have 
disputed  this  idea,  have  spoken  as  if  the  question  of 
the  value  and  truth  of  religion  depended  on  its  being 
proved  or  disproved.  In  other  words,  they  have 
assumed  that  a  tendency  which  manifests  itself  at  first 
as  a  belief  in  ghosts,  must  necessarily  remain  to  the 
last  an  illusory  tendency,  a  tendency  to  give  form  and 
substance  to  what  is  really  the  baseless  fabric  of  a 
vision.  But  those  who  say  this  might  just  as  well 
maintain  that  the  man  is  only  a  larger  child,  because 
the  "child  is  father  of  the  man";  or  that  science  is  i 
merely  a  collection  of  fancies,  because  its  first  efforts  \ 
produced  nothing  but  vague  hypothesis.  Now,  as  we 
have  already  seen,  it  lies  in  the  very  nature  of  the 
case  that  the  earliest  form  of  that  which  lives  and 
develops  is  the  least  adequate  to  its  nature,  and 
therefore  that  from  which  we  can  get  the  least  distinct 
clue  to  the  inner  principle  of  that  nature.  Hence 
to  trace  a  living  being  back  to  its  beginning,  and  to 
explain  what  follows  by  such  beginning  would  be 
simply  to  omit  almost  all  that  characterises  it,  and 
then  to  suppose  that  in  what  remains  we  have  the 
secret  of  its  existence.  This  is  not  really  to  explain 
it,  but  to  explain  it  away ;  for,  on  this  method, 
we  necessarily  reduce  the  features  that  distinguish  it 
to  a  minimum,  and,  when  we  have  done  so,  the 
remainder  may  well  seem  to  be  itself  reducible  to 
something  in  which  the  principle  in  question  does  not 

VOL.  I.  D 


50  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RELIGION. 

manifest  itself  at  all.  If  we  carry  the  animal  back  to 
protoplasm,  it  may  readily  seem  possible  to  explain  it 
\  as  a  chemical  compound.  And,  in  like  manner,  by  the 
same  minimising  process,  we  may  seem  to  succeed  in 
reducing  consciousness  and  self-consciousness  in  its 
simplest  form  to  sensation,  and  sensation  in  its  sim- 
plest form  to  something  not  essentially  different  from 
the  nutritive  life  of  plants.  The  fallacy  of  the  sorites 
may  thus  be  used  to  conceal  all  qualitative  changes 
under  the  guise  of  quantitative  addition  or  diminution, 
and  to  bridge  over  all  difference  by  the  aid  of  the 
idea  of  gradual  transition.  For,  as  the  old  school 
of  etymologists  showed,  if  we  are  at  liberty  to 
interpose  as  many  connecting  links  as  we  please, 
it  becomes  easy  to  imagine  that  things  the  most 
heterogeneous  should  spring  out  of  each  other. 
While,  however,  the  hypothesis  of  gradual  change — 
change  proceeding  by  infinitesimal  stages  which  melt 
into  each  other  so  that  the  eye  cannot  detect  where 
one  begins  and  the  other  ends — makes  such  a  tran- 
sition easier  for  imagination,  it  does  nothing  to 
diminish  the  difficulty  or  the  wonder  of  it  for  thought. 
For  the  change  which  we  call  "development"  is  always 
qualitative  as  well  as  quantitative,  and  to  treat  it  as 
merely  quantitative  is  to  omit  the  distinctive  character- 
istic of  the  facts  we  have  to  explain. 

We   shall   return   to   the    analysis   of   the   idea   of 
development  at  a  farther  stage  in  our  inquiry.      For 


METHODS  OF  DEFINING  RELIGION.  51 

the  present  enough  has  been  said  to  show  that  in 
the  definition  of  religion  we  have  not  to  seek  for 
something  which  is  common  to  all  religions,  but  rather 
for  that  which  underlies  them  all  as  their  principle. 
In  other  words,  what  we  are  looking  for  is  that  motive  ^ 
power,  working  in  the  human  mind  and  essentially 
bound  up  with  its  structure,  which  manifests  itself 
even  in  the  sorcery  and  ghost-seeing  of  savages,  which 
causes  the  gradual  transition  from  such  superstitions 
to  better  forms  of  worship,  and  which  fully  reveals  its  . 
character  only  in  the  highest  types  of  the  religious  life 
of  Christianity.  It  need  not,  therefore,  be  a  matter  of 
wonder,  if  an  examination  of  the  facts  of  religious  his- 
tory, taken  in  relation  to  their  psychological  possibility, 
should  lead  us  to  a  definition  of  religion  which  con- 
tains ideas  quite_  beyond  the  reach  of  uncivilised  men, 
and  even  to  ideas  that  are  not  present  to  the  conscious-  -. 
ness  of  many  who  are  in  a  high  degree  civilised.  This, 
indeed,  lies  in  the  very  nature  of  the  case,  and  may  be 
easily  illustrated  by  many  analogies.  Thus,  the 
structure  of  language  contains  implicitly  in  it  a  wealth 
of  relations  and  distinctions  of  thought,  which  it 
requires  the  most  subtle  metaphysic  to  analyse.  Yet 
all  the  thought  which  such  metaphysic  can  discover  is 
actually  involved  in  the  forms  of  grammar.  It  is  not 
an  external  addition  to  the  facts,  but  must  in  some 
way  have  been  present  in,  if  not  to,  the  minds  of  those 
who  created  the  lancrua^e.     Man  is  rational  and  self- 


52  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RELIGION. 

conscious  long  before  he  has  made  reason  and  self- 
consciousness  the  object  of  his  reflexion  ;  and  therefore 
he  is  guided  in  the  creation  of  language,  as  in  the 
development  of  his  social  relations  and  of  all  the 
institutions  of  his  life,  by  a  rational  principle,  of  which 
he  is  never  fully  conscious,  and  of  which  at  first  he 
is  not  conscious  at  all.  And  the  same  holds  good 
of  his  religion.  It  is  only  at  an  advanced  stage  of 
reflexion  that  we  begin  to  ask  what  religion  is,  and 
any  answer  to  the  question  must  involve  coijceptions  "j 
which  were  altogether  beyond  the  reach  of  those 
who  were  first  moved  by  the  religious  sentiment.  ^ 
They  did  not  knov/  and  could  not  know  what  "the 
spirit  which  was  within  them  did  signify,"  when  it 
awed  their  souls  into  worship,  or  lifted  them  in 
passionate  aspiration.  It  was  impossible  for  them 
to  analyse  the  idea  that  possessed  them.  A  religion 
even  partially  conscious  of  itself  could  only  be  the 
result  of  a  long  process  of  development.  It  is  there- 
fore no  valid  objection  to  a  definition  of  religion  that  it 
contains  much  that  was  not  consciously  present  to 
mankind  under  many  of  the  earlier  religions,  though 
it  would  be  an  objection  to  it  if  it  did  not  furnish 
the  means  of  explaining  what  was  present  to  them, — 
explaining  it,  that  is,  as  a  stage  in  the  development  of 
the  religious  consciousness.  A  principle  is  far  on  the 
way  to  a  complete  realisation  of  itself  when  it  has 
become    self-conscious,   yet    it    is    only   then    that    it 


METHODS  OF  DEFINING  RELIGION.  53 

is    able    to    explain    the    simplest    facts    of   its    own 
evolution. 

With  these  preliminary  explanations,  we  may  now 
proceed  with  the  attempt  to  define  religion.  We 
may  begin  by  asserting  that  religion  involves  a  re-  \ 

lation,  and,  indeed,  a  conscious  relation,  to  a  being  ^ 
or  beings  whom  we  designate  as  divine.  This,  of 
course,  is  little  more  than  a  nominal  definition  of 
religion  ;  for,  prior  to  an  explanation  of  the  term 
God,  it  does  not  tell  us  anything,  except  that  it  is 
a  relation  of  the  conscious  subject  to  some  kind  of 
object.  Even  to  this  definition,  general  as  it  is, 
objections  might  be  taken.  It  might  be  said  that,  \ 
in  some  forms  of  savage  superstition,  there  is  no  ob-  m 
jective  existence  believed  in,  to  which  the  name  of 
God  could  properly  be  applied ;  and  it  might  be 
pointed  out  that  in  Buddhism  we  have  an  instance 
of  a  religion  which  is  purely  subjective,  and  which 
finds  its  absolute  principle  only  in  the  soul  that 
turns  away  from  the  illusion  of  objective  existence 
altogether. 

But  both  these  objections  really  rest  on  that  false 
view  of  what  is  wanted  in  a  definition,  and  especi- 
ally in  the  definition  of  any  being  or  thing  that 
develops,  which  we  have  been  considering.  The 
phenomena  of  savage  religion  (assuming  them  to  be 
primitive  phenomena,  a  point  which  we  are  not  here 
concerned     to     discuss)    are    explicable    only    as    the 


54  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RELIGION. 

obscure  beginnings  of  a  religious  consciousness  that 
has  not  yet  taken  definite  form  ;  and  the  fact  that 
in  them  a  clear  idea  of  God  is  still  wanting  only 
shows  their  immaturity.  It  would  be  as  absurd  to 
say  that  the  idea  of  religion  is  to  be  confined  to 
that  which  religion  shows  itself  to  be  among  savages, 
as  to  say  that  the  idea  of  language  is  to  be  confined 
to  that  which  is  revealed  in  the  speech  of  an  infant. 
The  principle  of  development  makes  such  imperfect 
forms  intelligible ;  for  it  teaches  us  to  expect  that  in 
the  first  steps  of  the  evolution  of  any  form  of  con- 
sciousness, its  expression  will  be  indistinct  and  un- 
certain, and  will  least  of  all  show  what  it  really  is. 

The  same  answer,  mattatis  mutandis,  may  be  made 
to  the  other  objection  to  which  I  have  referred.  A 
true  conception  of  development  will  enable  us  to 
understand  the  peculiarities  of  the  Buddhist  religion, 
and  especially  its  denial  of  an  objective  God.  For 
it  will  teach  us  to  explain  that  denial  as  the  result 
of  the  recoil  of  the  soul  of  man,  from  the  worship 
of  God  under  a  purely  objective  or  external  form, 
to  the  opposite  extreme  of  subjectivity.  Such  a  one- 
sided development  of  religious  thought  becomes  in- 
telligible, when  we  cease  to  regard  it  as  an  isolated 
fact,  and  when  we  take  account  of  that  alternation 
of  movements,  that  swaying  from  side  to  side,  which  ' 
necessarily  accompanies  the  advance  of  human  thought 
from    one    stage    to    another.       When    we    take    the 


METHODS  OF  DEFINING  RELIGION.  55 

separate  religions  as  stages  in  a  process,  we  cease 
to  wonder  at  the  excessive  prominence  of  one  factor 
of  religion  at  one  period,  and  of  another  at  another. 
Eeligion  may  seem  at  one  time  to  become  alto- 
gether objective,  the  awe  or  fear  of  an  external 
power  which  does  with  man  what  it  will ;  and  at 
another,  it  may  seem  to  shrink  up  into  a  purely 
subjective  experience,  in  which  harmony  with  self 
takes  the  place  of  harmony  with  God.  But  such 
one-sided  developments  must  always  be  regarded  as 
stages  in  a  movement,  transitionary  phases  of  con- 
sciousness, which  we  cannot  estimate  rightly  except 
by  considering  at  once  that  which  they  have  developed 
from,  and  that  which  they  are  developing  to.  The 
preponderance  of  particular  elements  at  particular 
times — and  especially  the  alternating  preponderance 
of  the  objective  and  the  subjective  elements — should 
not,  therefore,  hide  from  us  the  fact  that  the  whole 
process  turns  upon  the  changing  relations  between 
two  constant  terms,  God  and  man,  each  of  which  is 
conceived  as  essentially  distinguished  from,  and  essen- 
tially related  to,  the  other, — God,  as  manifesting  Him- 
self to  and  in  man,  and  man,  as  consciously  seeking  ""n 
by  acts  of  worship,  by  prayer  or  sacrifice  or  self- 
surrender,  to  establish'  or  maintain  harmonious  rela- 
tions between  himself  and  his  God  or  gods. 

But  is  this  all  that  we  can  say  of  the  Being  thought 
lof  as  divine,  or  can  we  say  anything  more  ?      Can  we 


56  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RELIGION. 

say  that  God  is  to  be  thought  of  as  a  natural  or  as  a 
spiritual  Being ;  as  a  Being  whose  image  is  to  be  found 
in  man  himself,  or  in  any  of  the  animals  or  plants,  or 
in  the  heavenly  bodies,  or  the  powers  of  nature  ?  Or, 
on  the  other  hand,  are  we  to  refrain  with  pious  awe 
from  likening  Him  to  any  of  the  finite  things  which  He 
has  created  ?  Can  we  say,  we  might  further  ask, 
whether  God  is  to  be  conceived  as  one  or  as  many  ? 
In  either  case,  can  we  say  what  is  the  character  of 
the  unity  or  the  diversity  of  His  Being  ?  A  merely 
external  consideration  of  the  different  religions  would 
naturally  lead  us  to  conclude  that  religion  may  exist 
in  any  one  of  these  forms,  and  therefore  that  no  one 
of  them  can  be  regarded  as  necessary  to  it.  But  the 
principle  of  evolution  enables  us  to  regard  each  of 
these  forms  as  a  stage  in  the  development  of  the 
religious  idea,  a  phase  through  which  it  has  passed  in 
some  age  and  nation.  Further,  though  there  may 
be  great  difficulties  in  placing  the  different  religions  in 
any  definite  genetic  relation  to  each  other  so  as  to 
exhibit  a  complete  scheme  of  development ;  though, 
perhaps,  it  is  an  unattainable  ideal  to  arrange  all  the--.>>/ 
forms  of  religion  according  to  such  a  scheme,  yet  there 
can  be  little  doubt  or  controversy  as  to  the  general  v 
direction  in  which  the  current  of  history  has  run.  / 
The  most  general  view  of  the  historical  succession  of  n 
religions  is  sufficient  to  show  that  the  movement  has 
been  towards  a  conception  of  God  as  one  and  not  as  \( 


METHODS  OF  DEFINING  RELIGION.  57 

many ;  as  manifested  Jjotli  in  nature  and  in  spirit,  but 
as  reaching  a  higher  and  clearer  manifestation  in 
spirit  than  in  nature ;  as,  indeed,  revealing  in  man's 
highest  intellectual  and  moral  life  much  that  is  hid  or 
only  imperfectly  prefigured  in  nature.  Thus  far  we 
might  go  without  looking  beyond  the  most  obvious 
facts  of  history.  Further,  it  would  be  acknowledged 
that,  as  the  result  of  this  historical  process,  the  pro- 
blem of  religion  has  for  us  moderns  taken  a  definite 
shape,  both  for  those  who  accept  and  those  who  reject 
it.  It  would  be  acknowledged  by  almost  every  one 
that  we  are  now  shut  up  to  the  alternative,  cither  that 
there  is  no  God,  and  no  revelation  or  knowledge  of 
Him,  or  that  the  revelation  of  God  must  be  sought  in 
the  whole  process  of  nature  and  history,  regarded  as 
a  development  which  finds  its  ultimate  end  and  its 
culminating  expression  in  the  life  of  man  as  a  spiritual 
being.  This  is  the  God  whom  alone  it  is  now 
considered  worth  while  either  to  assert  or  to  deny. 
This  is  "  our  highest  faith,  our  deepest  doubt,"  the 
faith  which  is  supported  by  the  most  powerful  utter- 
ances of  modern  poetry  and  philosophy,  the  doubt  on 
which  all  the  scepticism  and  agnosticism  of  the  age 
are  concentrated. 

Now,  postponing  in  the  meantime  all  attempt  to 
trace  out  more  definitely  the  course  of  development 
which  has  resulted  in  such  a  consciousness  as  this — in 
the  consciousness  that  God,  if  there  be  a  God,  must  be 


58  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RELIGION. 

conceived  as  a  self-revealing  Spirit,  whose  revelation 
reaches  its  culmination  in  the  intellectual  and  moral 
life  of  man — postponing  even  the  question  whether 
this  idea  of  God  rests  upon  any  suflicient  evidence,  let 
us  simply  ask  what  is  implied  in  the  very  existence  of 
the  idea  or  consciousness  in  question.  In  other  words, 
what  are  the  conditions  in  the  mind  of  man  which 
make  the  rise  of  such  a  consciousness  possible  ? 
What  is  it  in  the  constitution  of  the  human  spirit  that 
explains  the  origin  and  the  growth  of  the  belief  in  a 
JJivine  Being,  and,  ultimately,  of  sucli  a  Divine  Being  ? 
The  broad  general  fact  that  religion  is  a  persistent 
element  of  man's  consciousness,  and  further,  that  the 
religious  idea  has  gone  on  developing  till  it  has  taken  . 
this  form,  and  taken  it  in  the  minds  both  of  those  who  \ 
assert  and  of  those  who  deny  the  reality  of  its  object, 
makes  it  necessary  to  ask  for  its  psychological  causes. 
We  may  regard  it,  if  we  please,  as  an  illusion  ;  but  it  is 
at  least  no  superficial  phenomenon  of  belief,  no  chance 
product  of  phantasy.  It  is  a  principle  which  has  grown 
witli  man's  growth  and  strengthened  with  his  strength, 
and  which  has  shown  itself  to  be  bound  up  in  some 
way  with  his  inmost  consciousness  of  himself.  We  need 
not  deny,  at  least  in  the  first  instance,  that  there  may 
be  a  point  in  his  develoj)ment  at  which  man  will 
throw  off  religion  ;  but,  if  religion  ever  becomes  extinct, ; 
it  can  only  be  because  it  has  served  its  purpose  and  ^ 
has  given  rise  to  some  more  comprehensive  form  of 


METHODS  OF  DEFINING  REEIGION.  59 

life.  And  even  the  final  recognition  of  the  unreality 
of  the  object  or  objects  of  religion  would  not 
release  us  from  the  necessity  of  explaining  it,  of 
tracing  it  back  to  its  root  in  man's  nature,  and  of 
determining  its  relation  to  other  elements  in  his 
consciousness.  And,  indeed,  it  is  only  in  this  way 
that  we  can  finally  ascertain  its  value — its  truth,  if 
it  contain  any  truth,  or  its  falsity,  if  it  be  nothing 
but  an  illusion.  For  as,  on  the  one  hand,  we  are 
never  sure  of  a  truth  till  we  see  the  evidencing 
principle  which  connects  it  with  our  intelligence, 
so  we  can  never  finally  rid  ourselves  of  an  error 
till  we  have  found  out  the  secret  of  its  power  over 
us,  the  semblance  of  truth  whereby  it  deceived  us. 
Just  as  Kant  sought  to  determine  the  value  and 
limitS'  of  our  knowledge  of  the  immediate  world  of 
experience,  by  asking  what  makes  that  knowledge 
possible,  so  we  must  ask  what  makes  possible  our  ^ 
religious  consciousness,  our  real  or  supposed  know-  \ 
ledge  of  a  Divine  Being.  It  is  only  in  this  way  that 
we  can  discover  whether  it  is  real  or  not,  and,  if  real, 
what  kind  and  extent  of  reality  it  has.  We  have  to 
ask,  in  other  words,  what  is  the  ground  in  our  rational 
nature  of  a  consciousness  which  grows,  as  the  religious 
consciousness  has  actually  grown,  and  which  finally 
takes  the  form  which  it  has  now  actually  taken,  in 
order  that  we  may  once  for  all  determine  the  extent 
and  nature  of  its  validity. 


LECTURE    THIED. 

THE  DEFINITION  OF  KELIGION. 

General  Result  of  the  Historical  Evoliition  of  Religion — The 
Question  of  its  Possibility — The  Three  Ideas  that  define  our 
Consciousness — Place  of  the  Idea  of  God  in  relation  to  the  Ideas 
of  Self  and  Not- Self — That  Religion  does  not  imply  Reflective 
Consciousness  of  the  Idea  of  God — Sense  in  which  the  Ordinary 
Conscioicsness  implies  this  Idea — Consistency  of  this  with  the 
existence  of  degraded  Types  of  Religion — The  Distinction  hetioeen 
what  is  in,  and  what  is  for  Consciousness,  and  its  Bearing  on 
the  Idea  of  Development — Religioxis  Reverence^  as  rising  above 
Slavish  Fear  of  the  Object,  and  Presumptuous  Self-assertion  of 
the  Subject — Religion  as  a  Principle  of  Unity  in  Life. 

In  the  last  lecture  we  were  seeking  for  some  general 
idea  or  definition  which  might  be  a  guide  to  us  in 
our  subsequent  inquiries.  I  endeavoured  to  show 
that  the  idea  we  want  is  not  to  be  found  in  any 
element  common  to  all  religions.  For,  even  if  such 
an  element  could  be  detected,  it  would  be  too  general 
to  supply  us  with  a  clue  to  the  facts  of  religious 
history.  A  definition  so  obtained  would  correspond, 
if  to  any,  only  to  the  lowest  and  most  primi-\ 
tive  form  of  religious  life ;   it  would  not  be  a  prin-    ^ 


THE  DEFINITION  OF  RELIGION.  61 

ciple  adequate  to  the  explanation  of  the  endless 
multiplicity  of  forms  which  religion  takes  in  dif- 
ferent ages  and  nations,  or  of  the  way  in  which 
they  successively  arise  out  of  each  other.  Eather, 
in  conformity  with  the  idea  of  evolution,  the  defini- 
tion of  religion  must  be  derived  from  a  consideration  \ 
of  the  whole  course  of  its  history,  viewed  as  a  pro- 
cess of  transition  from  the  lowest  to  the  highest 
form  of  it.  In  fact,  if  the  different  religions  are  to 
be  regarded  as  successive  stages  in  a  development, 
what  we  have  in  that  history  is  just  religion  pro- 
gressively defining  itself,  and  the  idea  of  religion 
will  be  most  clearly  expressed  in  the  most  mature 
form  which  it  has  reached  as  the  result  of  the  whole 
process.  Eeflexion,  therefore,  will  have  to  read  that 
history  backwards,  and  to  view  what  is  earliest  in 
the  light  of  ideas  derived  from  a  consideration  of 
what  is  latest ;  somewhat  as  we  search  among  the 
sparse  records  of  the  boyhood  of  a  great  man  for  / 
the  indications  of  a  greatness  which  none  of  his  con- 
temporaries saw,  or  could  possibly  have  seen. 

Now  the  most  general  and  superficial  view  of 
history  is  sufficient  to  show  that,  while  all  religion 
involves  a  conscious  relation  to  a  being  called  God, 
I  this  Divine  Being  is  in  different  religions  conceived 
lin  the  most  different  ways ;  as  one  and  as  many,  as 
natural  and  as  spiritual,  as  like  to,  and  manifested 
in,  almost  every  object  in  the  heavens  above  or  earth 


C2  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RELIGION. 

beneath,  in  mountains  and  trees,  in  animals  and  men  ; 
or,  on  the  contrary,  as  incapable  of  being  represented 
by  any  finite  image  whatsoever  ;  and,  again,  as  the 
God  of  a  family,  of  a  nation,  or  of  humanity.  But, 
further,  when  we  regard  the  history  of  religion  as 
a  process  of  evolution,  we  do  not  need  to  go  beyond 
the  most  general  facts  to  discover  that,  in  the  de- 
\'elopment  of  the  idea  of  God,  there  is  a  certain 
trend  or  direction  of  progress  from  multiplicity  to 
unity,  from  the  natural  to  the  spiritual,  from  the 
particular  to  the  universal.  We  are,  therefore,  able 
to  say  that  noio,  as  the  result  of  the  long  process, 
the  only  God  whom  it  is  possible  to  worship  is  one 
who  manifests  Himself  both  in  nature  and  in  spirit, 
but  more  clearly  in  spirit  than  in  nature,  and  most 
clearly  of  all  in  the  highest  developments  of  the 
intellectual  and  moral  life  of  man.  Farther,  we  can 
say  that  all  ideas  of  a  family  or  national  god  have 
disappeared  from  the  minds  of  civilised  men,  or  that 
they  exist  only  as  survivals  from  an  earlier  stage  of 
human  culture.  It  is  universally  acknowledged  that, 
if  there  be  a  God,  he  can  be  no  '  respecter  of  per- 
sons,' bub  must  be  a  '  God  of  the  whole  earth,'  mani- 
fested in  and  to  the  spirit  of  man  in  all  times  and 
places  alike.  Sentiment  and  aesthetic  feeling  may  at 
times  make  us  throw  ourselves  back  into  the  spirit 
of  an  earlier  faith,  and  wish,  like  Wordsworth,  that 
we  could 


V 


THE  DEFINITION  OF  RELIGION.  03 

"  Have  sight  of  Proteus  rising  from  the  sea, 
Or  hear  old  Triton  blow  his  wreathed  horn." 

But  we  cannot  really  worship  such  divinities.  The 
only  Deity  we  can  believe  in,  nay,  we  might  say, 
the  only  Deity  we  can  disbelieve  in,  or  seriously  deny 
is  a  universal  God,  a  spiritual  principle  manifested 
in   all  nature   and  history. 

Now,  regarding  the  historical  development  of  re- 
ligion as  a  whole,  up  to  its  culmination  in  a  uni- 
versal religion,  we  may  reasonably  ask  how  we  are 
to  explain  its  possibility.  An  element  of  human  life 
which  has  had  such  a  history,  whose  influence  has 
been  steadily  widening  and  deepening  with  the 
general  advance  of  civilisation  through  age  after  age, 
must  be  closely,  if  not  indissolul)ly,  bound  up  with 
the  nature  of  man.  And  it  must  be  so,  whether 
ultimately  we  are  to  regard  it  as  a  fundamental 
truth  or  a  fundamental  error.  It  may  be  an  illu- 
sion, but  it  is  not  at  least  a  superficial  illusion, 
produced  by  the  accidental  circumstances  of  our  en- 
vironment, or,  as  was  at  one  time  supposed,  by  the 
intrigues  of  interested  impostors.  It  is  a  belief 
which,  whether  true  or  false,  has  a  psychological 
necessity  as  an  important  phase  in  the  development 
of  the  human  spirit,  a  belief  which  has  a  deep  root 
in  the  spirit  of  man,  even  if  it  is  not  a  permanent 
element  of  his  life.  And  the  only  way  to  find  a 
rational    criterion,    by   which   we    may   ascertain    the 


.    6-t  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RELIGION. 

nature  and  extent  of  its  validity,  and  determine  the 
truth  or  falsity  of  its  claims,  is  by  asking  ourselves 
what  that  root  is. 

What,  then,  I  ask,  is  the  root  or  basis  of  religion 

'  in  the  nature  of  our  intelligence  ?  Why  is  not  man 
content  with  the  experience  of  the  finite,  and  why 
does  he  seek  after  an  infinite  Being,  if  haply  he  may 
find  Him  ?  Can  it  be  said  that  the  idea  of  God  is 
bound  up  with  the  other  elements  of  our  general 
consciousness  of  the  world  and  of  ourselves  ?  And 
if  so,  what  place  does  it  hold  in  relation  to  the  other 
elements  of  that  consciousness  ? 

I  answer  that,  when  we  consider  the  general  nature 
of  our  conscious  life — our  life  as  rational  beings 
endowed  with  the  powers  of  thinking  and  willing — 

f  we  find  that  it  is  defined  and,  so  to  speak,  circum- 

1  scribed  hy  three  ideas,  which  are  closely,  and  even 
indissolubly,  connected  with  each  other. 

These  are  the  idea  of  the  object  or  not-self,  the 
idea  of  the  subject  or  self,  and  the  idea  of  the  unity 

;  which  is  presupposed  in  the  difference  of  the  self  and 
the  not-self,  and  within  which  they  act  and  react  on 

'  each  other  :  in  other  words,  the  idea  of  God.  Let 
me  explain  these  terms  more  fully.  The  object  is 
the  general  name  under  which  we  include  the  ex- 
ternal world  and  all  the  things  and  beings  in  it,  all 
that   we   know   and   all    that   we   act   on,    the   whole 

:  environment,  which  conditions  the  activity  of  the  ego 


\ 


THE  DEFINITION  OF  RELIGION.  65 

and  furnishes  the  means  and  the  sphere  in  which  it 
realises  itself.  All  this  we  call  object,  in  order  to 
indicate  its  distinction  from  and  its  relation  to  the 
subject  for  which  it  exists.  We  call  it  by  this  name 
also  to  indicate  that  we  are  obliged  to  think  of  it  as 
one,  whole,  one  world,  all  of  whose  parts  are  embraced 
in  one  connexion  of  space  and  all  whose  changes  take  ^ 
place  in  one  connexion  of  time.  All  these  parts  and 
changes,  therefore,  form  elements  in  one  system,  and 
modern  science  teaches  us  to  regard  them  all  as  con- 
nected together  by  links  of  causation.  There  is  only 
one  thing  which  stands  over  against  this  complex 
whole  of  existence,  and  refuses  to  be  regarded  simply 
as  a  part  of  the  system  ;  and  that  is  the  ego,  the  self, 
the  suhj'ect  for  which  it  exists.  For  the  primary  con- 
dition of  the  existence  of  this  subject  is  that  it  sliould. 
distinguish  itself  from  the  object  as  such — from  each 
object,  and  from  the  whole  system  of  objects.  Hence, 
strictly  speaking,  there  is  but  one  object  and  one  sub- 
ject for  each  of  us  ;  for,  in  opposition  to  the  subject, 
the  totality  of  objects  constitute  one  world,  and  in 
opposition  to  the  object  all  the  experiences  of  the 
subject,  all  its  thought  and  action,  are  merged  in 
the  unity  of  one  self.  All  our  life,  then,  moves 
between  these  two  terms  which  are  essentially  dis- 
tinct from,  and  even  opposed  to,  each  other.  Yet, 
thoucjh  thus  set  in  an  antagonism  which  can  never 
cease,  because  with  its  ceasing   the   whole  nature  of 

VOL.    I.  E 


m  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RELIGION. 

both  would  be  subverted,  they  are  also  essentially 
related,  nor  could  either  of  them  be  conceived  to 
exist  without  the  other.  The  consciousness  of  the 
one,  we  might  even  say,  is  inseparably  the  conscious- 
ness of  its  relation  to  the  other.  We  know  the  ohjcd 
only  as  we  bring  it  back  to  the  unity  of  the  self ; 
we  know  the  subject  only  as  we  realise  it  in  the 
object. 

But,  lastly,  these  two  ideas,  between  which  our 
whole  life  of  thought  and  action  is  contained,  and 
from  one  to  the  other  of  which  it  is  continually 
moving,  point  back  to  a  third  idea  which  embraces 
them  both,  and  which  in  turn  constitutes  their 
limit  and  ultimate  condition.  For  where  we  have 
two  terms,  which  are  thus  at  once  essentially  dis- 
tinguished and  essentially  related,  which  we  are 
obliged  to  contrast  and  ojy'posc  to  each  other,  seeing 
that  they  have  neither  of  them  any  meaning  except  as 
opposite  counterparts  of  each  other,  and  which  we  are 
equally  obliged  to  unite,,  seeing  that  the  whole  content 
of  each  is  just  its  movement  towards  the  other,  we  are 
necessarily  driven  to  think  of  these  two  terms  as  the 
manifestation  or  realisation  of  a  third  term,  which  is 
higher  than  either.  Eecognising  that  the  object  only 
exists  in  distinction  from,  and  relation  to,  the  subject, 
we  find  it  impossible  to  reduce  the  subject  to  a  mere 
object  among  other  objects.  Eecognising  that  the 
subject  exists  only  as  it  returns  upon  itself  from  or 


THE  DEFINITION  OF  RELIGION.  07 

realises  itself  in  the  object,  we  find  it  impossible  to  re- 
duce the  object  to  a  mere  phase  in  the  life  of  the 
subject.  But,  recognising  them  as  indivisible  yet 
necessarily  opposed,  as  incapable  of  identification  yet 
necessarily  related,  we  are  forced  to  seek  the  secret  of  \ 
their  being  in  a  higher  principle,  of  whose  unity  they 
in  their  action  and  reaction  are  the  manifestation, 
which  they  presuppose  as  their  beginning  and  to  which 
they  point  as  their  end.  How  otherwise  can  we  do 
justice  at  once  to  their  distinction  and  their  relation, 
to  their  independence  and  their  essential  connexion 
with  each  other  ?  The  two,  subject  and  object,  are 
the  extreme  terms  in  the  difference  which  is  essential 
to  our  rational  life.  Each  of  them  presupposes  the 
other,  and  therefore  neither  can  be  regarded  as  pro- 
ducing the  other.  Hence,  we  are  compelled  to  think  of 
them  both  as  rooted  in  a  still  higher  principle,  which  is 
at  once  the  source  of  their  relatively  independent  exist-  ^ 
ence  and  the  all-embracing  unity  that  limits  their  inde- 
pendence. This  principle,  therefore,  may  be  imaged 
as  a  crystal  sphere  that  holds  them  together,  and 
which,  through  its  very  transparency,  is  apt  to  escape 
our  notice,  yet  which  must  always  be  there  as  the  con- 
dition and  limit  of  their  operation.  To  put  it  more 
directly,  the  idea  of  an  absolute  unity,  which  tran-  \ 
scends  all  the  oppositions  of  finitude,  and  especially 
the  last  opposition  which  includes  all  others — the 
opposition  of  subject  and  object — is  the  idtimatc  jpre- 


68  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RELIGION. 

supposition  of  our  consciousness.  Hence  we  cannot 
understand  the  real  character  of  our  rational  life  or 
appreciate  the  full  compass  of  its  movement,  unless 
I  we  recognise  as  its  necessary  constituents  or  guiding 
ideas,  not  only  the  ideas  of  object  and  subject,  but 
also  the  idea  of  God.  The  idea  of  God,  therefore — 
meaning  by  that,  in  the  first  instance,  only  the  idea  of 
an  absolute  principle  of  unity  which  binds  in  one  "  all 
thinking  things,  all  objects  of  all  thought,"  which  is  at 
once  the  source  of  being  to  all  things  that  are,  and  of 
knowing  to  all  beings  that  know — is  an  essential  prin- 
ciple, or  rather  the  ultimate  essential  principle  of  our 
intelligence,  a  principle  which  must  manifest  itself  in 
the  life  of  every  rational  creature.  Every  creature, 
>who  is  capable  of  the  consciousness  of  an  objective 
world  and  of  the  consciousness  of  a  self,  is  capable  also 
I  of  the  consciousness  of  God.  Or,  to  sum  up  the  whole 
'matter  in  one  word,  every  rational  being  as  such  isa 
religious  being.^ 

While  we  say  this,  however,  we  must  at  once  guard 
against  a  misunderstanding  which  is  very  apt  to  arise. 
If  all  men  are  religious,  and  if  religion  involves  the 
idea  of  an  absolute  principle  of  unity  in  our  lives,  it 

^  The  above,  of  course,  is  only  a  very  abstract  statement  of  an 
idea  which  requires  much  ilhistration  and  explanation.  It  was 
necessary,  however,  to  make  it  at  once,  in  order  to  indicate  the 
point  of  view  from  which  the  subject  is  to  be  treated.  This  and 
several  of  the  following  lectures  will  be  devoted  to  the  further 
exposition  of  it. 


THE  DEFINITION  OF  RELIGION.  69 

might  seem  to  follow  that  the  belief  in  such  a 
principle  must  be  found  in  connexion  with  every 
form  of  relii,non.  But,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  this  is 
far  from  being  the  case.  Indeed,  it  would  be  hard 
to  discover  in  any  pre-Christian  religion  a  thought 
that  fully  answers  to  the  account  of  religion  just 
given  Yet,  in  development,  the  earliest  stages 
always  point  for  their  explanation  and  completion 
to  the  later  stage ;  and  the  germ  of  the  idea  of  God 
as  the  ultimate  unity  of  being  and  knowing,  subject 
and  object,  must  in  some  way  be  present  in  every 
rational  consciousness.  For  such  a  consciousness  ne- 
cessarily involves  the  idea  of  the  self  and  the  not-self, 
the  ego  and  the  world,  as  distinct  yet  in  relation,  i.e. 
as  opposed  within  a  unity.  The  clear  reflective  con- 
sciousness of  the  object  without,  of  the  subject  within, 
and  of  God  as  the  absolute  reality  which  is  beyond 
and  beneath  both — as  one  complete  rational  con- 
sciousness in  which  each  of  these  terms  is  clearly 
distinguished  and  definitely  related  to  the  others — is, 
in  the  nature  of  the  case,  a  late  acquisition  of  man's 
spirit,  one  that  can  come  to  him  only  as  the  result 
of  a  long  process  of  development.  But  the  three 
elements  are  there  in  the  mind  of  the  simplest 
human  being  who  opens  his  eyes  upon  the  world, 
who  distinguishes  himself  from  it  yet  relates  himself 
to  it.  And  the  difficulty  and  perplexity  which  is 
occasioned   by  the   unity  and   the   difference  of  these 


70  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RELIGION. 

elements    is    the    moving    principle     of    development 
from  the  very  dawn  of  intelligence. 

Let  it  not,  therefore,  be  thought  that  we  are  sup- 
posing   primitive    man    to    possess    developed    philo- 
sophical  ideas  of   the  relations   of   the  self  and    the 
not-self.      We    can    no    more    expect    him    to   attain 
to   such   ideas   than    we   can   expect   him   to  analyse 
grammatically    or    logically    any    sentence    which    he 
utters.     We  assume   that   he   is   conscious  of  an  ex- 
Ij  ternal   world,    but    not    that    he    knows    anything   of 
the  conditions  under  which  knowledge  of  that  world 
is  possible, — anything  of  the   nature  of  an   object  as 
such,  or  of  the  relations  of  objects  in  general.      We 
assume  that  he  is  conscious   of  a  self,  but  not   that 
he   has  ever  considered   what  is   meant  by  a  self,  or 
that  he  has  distinguished   between  the   self — as    the 
centre   of  unity  in  all  his   thinking  and  feeling  and 
willing — and    the    particular    thoughts    and    feelings 
and  acts  which  he  refers  to  it.      Finally,  we  assume 
that   he  docs   relate  self  and   not-self  to  each   other, 
and  that,  therefore,  in  some  way  he  rises  in  thought 
above    his    own    individual    existence    and    the    indi- 
vidual existence  of  the  objects  he  knows ;  we  assume, 
in   other  words,  that,  as  a  rational   being,  he  is   not  \ 
limited  to  a  purely  objective  consciousness  of  things, 
nor   imprisoned   in   a   subjective  consciousness   of  his 
own   ideas,   but    that    he    takes   up   a   point  of  view 
above    this    opposition.       And    this    necessity    of   his 


THE  DEFINITION  OF  RELIGION.  71 

rational  nature,  the  necessity  which  places  him  at  a 
universal  point  of  view,  cannot  but  modify  his  con- 
sciousness both  of  the  object  and  of  himself;  it  cannot 
but  lead  him  in  some  way  to  raise  his  thoughts  from 
the  world  and  from  himself  to  that  which  is  beyond 
both,  or  to  see  in  them  somethino;  which  is  greater 
than  their  immediate  existence  as  finite  things.  But 
this  does  not  mean  that  the  savage  or  the  child  is 
able  to  analyse  the  idea  of  God  or  to  give  any  in- 
telligible account  of  the  infinite  and  the  universal, 
of  that  something,  higher  than  the  immediate  objects 
of  his  consciousness,  which  so  persistently  haunts  him 
and  disturbs  his  life  '  with  thoughts  beyond  the 
reaches  of  his  soul.'  In  fact,  we  only  assume  that 
he  is  a  self-conscious  being,  and  that,  as  such,  he 
cannot  but  oppose  himself  to  objects  and  relate  him- 
self to  them  ;  for  this  already  involves  that  these 
three  elements  are  present,  if  not  to,  yet  in  his 
consciousness,  stimulating  it  to  development,  and 
therefore  to  the  differentiation  and  integration  of  the 
confused  unity  of  sense.  But  this,  as  will  be  shown 
more  fully  in  the  sequel,  is  quite  consistent  with  the 
fullest  recognition  of  the  crudeness,  the  materialism, 
the  almost  brutal  sensuousness  and  coarseness,  of  the 
ideas  of  uncivilised  man,  who  has  never  distinctly 
realised,  nay,  who  scarce  can  be  said  to  have  realised 
at  all,  the  existence  of  anything  that  is  not  given 
in    the    particular    impressions    of    sense.       Whether 


72  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RELIGION. 

realised  or  not,  the  uuiv^ersal  principle  is  there, 
ruling  over  man's  consciousness  of  the  particular.  But 
at  this  early  stage  he  cannot  make  it  an  object  of 
reflexion.  It  cannot,  therefore,  present  itself  to  him 
(i^  a  universal  principle,  but  only  in  the  guise  of  a 
particular  and  finite  object ;  and  his  consciousness,  if 
he  has  any  consciousness  of  it,  must  be  in  the  utmost 
degree  incoherent  and  confused.  Man  is  always  man  ; 
but  in  this  stage  he  is  least  of  all  conscious  what  it 
is  to  be  a  man ;  and,  in  spite  of  the  immense  formal 
difference  which  separates  him  from  a  pure  animal 
or  sensitive  being,  from  beings  who  are  not  self-con- 
scious, the  difference  of  the  content  of  his  thought  and 
feeling  from  theirs  seems  almost  infinitesimal.  Nay, 
we  might  even  say  that,  in  a  moral  point  of  view, 
it  is  a  difference  for  the  worse.  God  has  given  him 
a  glimpse  of  heaven's  light,  and,  as  Mephistopheles 
says  in  the  Faust, 

"  Er  braucht's  allein 
Niir  tliierischer  als  jedes  Tliier  zu  seyn." 

"  He  makes  use  of  it  only  to  be  more  brutal  than 
any  brute."  He  distinguishes  himself  from  the 
animals  mainly  by  the  fact  that  he  has  lost  the 
simplicity,  the  innocence,  the  contentment  with  the 
present,  which  characterises  the  animal.  The  balance 
of  sense  has  been  disturbed  or  destroyed  in  him,  but 
the  balance  of  spirit  has  not  been  attained.  He  is 
the    most   greedy   and    fierce    and    sensual   of    beasts, 


THE  DEFINITION  OF  RELIGION.  73 

because  he  cannot  fully  satisfy  himself  with  the 
diet  of  the  beast,  and  has  as  yet  acquired  no  idea 
of  any  other  diet.  And  his  religion,  therefore,  seems, 
in  our  first  view  of  it,  to  contain  little  more  than 
a  terror  of  something  more  powerful  than  himself, 
the  haunting  consciousness  of  his  weakness  before 
the  mighty  forces  of  the  universe,  and  the  dream 
that,  by  some  incantation  or  propitiation,  he  may 
bring  them  to  his  side.  On  a  closer  view,  however, 
when  we  regard  the  growth  of  savage  superstition 
not  merely  in  itself,  but  in  the  light  of  that  which 
springs  out  of  it,  we  begin  to  see  that  under  the 
unsightliness  and  horror  of  his  superstition,  there  is 
germinating  a  consciousness  of  that  which  is  greater 
than  himself  and  greater  than  any  object,  and  yet 
which  is  so  close  to  him  that  he  cannot  neglect  or 
evade  it.  We  cannot,  indeed,  say  in  this  case  that 
corrifptio  optimi  pessivia ;  for  what  we  have  here  is 
not  corruption  and  decay,  but  rather  the  error  and 
defect  of  imperfect  development :  not  the  babblings  of 
senility  but  the  lispings  of  infancy.  But  we  can  say 
that  it  is  what  is  best  in  him — his  highest  con- 
sciousness and  that  which  is  most  distinctive  of  him 
as  a  man — which  is  troubling  and  perplexing  him. 
It  is  '  heaven's  light  that  is  leading  him  astray.'  And 
his  wanderings,  terrible  as  they  sometimes  are,  give 
proof,  nevertheless,  of  something  far  higher  than  the 
dull  complacency  and  innocence  of  animal  life :   they 


74  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RELIGION. 

are  the  indication  of  a  nature  that  cannot  be  satis- 
fied  with   the   finite. 

It  may  be  desirable  to  illustrate  this  idea  a  little 
farther,  as  it  is  the  key  to  what  is  perhaps  the 
greatest  difficulty  connected  with  the  application  of 
the  idea  of  development  to  the  life  of  man,  and 
particularly  to  his  religious  life.  It  is  hard  to 
analyse  the  religious  consciousness,  and  to  express  n 
all  the  elements  it  contains,  without  seeming  to 
attribute  to  it  universally  elements  which  are  found 
only  in  its  highest  forms.  This  difficulty  we  can 
meet  only  by  making  a  clear  distinction  between 
that  which  religion  contains  or  involves — that 
which  it  is  to  one  who  is  able  to  reflect  upon 
its  nature  and  thoroughly  to  analyse  it — and  that 
which  it  is  to  the  subject  of  it,  that  which  the 
religious  man  consciously  realises.  The  distinction 
is  one  which  affects  every  department  of  man's 
rational  life,  and  it  cannot  be  neglected  by  any 
one  who  would  seek  to  understand  him  as  a  being 
who  not  only  exists  but  develops.  Though  man  is 
essentially  self-conscious,  he  always  is  more  than  he 
thinks  or  knows;  and  his  thinking  and  knowing  are^ 
ruled  by  ideas  of  which  he  is  at  first  unaware,  but 
which,  nevertheless,  affect  everything  he  says  or 
does.  Of  these  ideas  we  may,  therefore,  expect  to 
find  some  indication  even  in  the  earliest  stage  of  his 
development ;    but    we    cannot    expect    that    in    that 


THE  DEFINITION  OF  RELIGION.  75 

stage  they  will  appear  in  their  proper  form  or  1)6 
known  for  what  they  really  are.  We  often  speak, 
indeed,  in  a  general  and  indiscriminating  way,  as  if 
the  undeveloped  mind  had  no  contents  except  that 
of  which  it  is  clearly  conscious.  In  this  spirit 
Wordsworth  declares  of  a  rude  and  uncultivated 
nature  that 

"  A  primrose  by  the  river's  brim 
A  yellow  primrose  was  to  him, 
And  it  was  nothing  more." 

But,  if  we  take  this  literally,  it  contains  an  impossi- 
bility. Peter  Bell  could  not  see  the  primrose  with 
the  eyes  of  a  poet ;  it  could  not  awaken  in  him  all 
the  suggestions  of  virgin  beauty  and  early  decay 
which  made   Shakspere's  Perdita  speak  of 

"  pale  primroses 
That  die  unmarried  ere  they  can  behold 
Bright  Phoebus  in  his  strength'"; 

but  as  little  could  he  gaze  upon  it  with  the  dull 
uncomprehending  gaze  of  the  animal,  whose  sense  is 
for  the  moment  filled  by  it  to  the  exclusion  of  every- 
thing else.  In  recognising  it  as  a  primrose — by 
whatever  marks  or  characteristics  he  does  so  re- 
cognise it — he  has  given  it  a  definite  place  in  his 
world,  a  place  determined  by  its  relations  to  other 
things  and  to  himself..  If  he  has  not  observed  any 
of  the  analogies  and  relations  which  make  the  little 


76  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RELIGION. 

flower  so  eloquent  to  the  poet,  he  has  at  least  laid 
the  basis  and  prepared  the  way  for  them,  by  giving 
to  it  a  local  habitation  and  a  name  in  the  intellig- 
ible world.  In  like  manner,  it  might  seem  not 
unjust  to  say  that  the  religion  of  primitive  man  is 
nothing  but  a  degrading  fear  of  some  superior 
power,  and  that  the  idea  which  we  have  introduced 
into  our  definition  of  religion,  tlie  idea  of  an  ultimate 
unity  which  underlies  and  embraces  "all  thinkings 
things,  all  objects  of  all  thought,"  is  entirely  beyond  ^ 
his  reach.  It  is  beyond  his  reach  in  the  sense  that 
he  never  can  comprehend  it,  nor  even  set  it  as  a 
distinct  object  before  his  thought  or  imagination. 
But  as,  after  all,  he  is  a  self-conscious  being,  he 
cannot  but  distinguish  himself  from  and  relate  him- 
self to  the  objective  world ;  and  it  is  impossible 
that  the  suspicion,  the  Ahnung,  the  dim  anticipative 
consciousness,  of  an  all-encompassing  power,  which  is 
beyond  both  object  and  subject  yet  manifested  in 
both,  should  not  sometimes  visit  him.  And  to  one 
who  views  his  obscure  superstitions — his  dread  and 
horror  of  supernatural  powers  which  are  near  him 
but  which  he  cannot  measure — in  the  light  of  a 
true  idea  of  the  relations  of  self-consciousness  to 
the  consciousness  of  God,  they  will  seem  already  to 
contain  the  germ  of  those  higher  forms  of  belief 
which  gradually  arise  out  of  them. 

What    I    have    said    may    be    thus    summed    up'. 


THE  DEFINITION  OF  RELIGION.  77 

Man,  by  the  very  constitution  of  his  mind,  has 
three  ways  of  thinking  open  to  him.  He  can  look 
outwards,  npon  the  world  around  him  ;  he  can  look 
imvards,  upon  the  self  within  him ;  and  he  can  look 
upwards,  to  the  God  above  him,  to  the  Being  who 
unites  the  outward  and  the  inward  worlds  and  who 
manifests  Himself  in  both.  None  of  these  possibilities 
can  remain  entirely  unrealised.  Even  in  the  earliest 
stages  of  his  existence  he  cannot  but  be  conscious 
of  the  outward  world :  it  is  the  first  and  most 
natural  effort  of  his  mind  to  throw  itself  into  the 
external  objects  which  exercise  all  his  senses, 
and  offer  immediate  satisfaction  to  his  appetites. 
By  a  natural  necessity  he  thus,  as  it  were,  lives  out 
of  doors  and  becomes  a  citizen  of  the  world,  long 
before  he  learns  to  flwell  at  home  with  himself  and 
to  know  himself  as  having  an  inner  life  of  his  own. 
Yet,  though  this  is  true,  it  is  certain  that  the  most 
unreflecting  man  has  an  inner,  as  well  as  an  outer, 
side  to  his  mental  existence.  He  is  essentially  self- 
conscious  ;  and  this  self-consciousness,  however  little 
he  may  reflect  on  it,  inevitably  separates  him  from 
the  things  and  beings  he  knows,  even  lohilc  he 
knows  them.  The  pains  and  pleasures  of  his  sensu- 
ous existence,  not  to  mention  anything  higher,  must 
inevitably  send  him  back  upon  himself,  and  make 
him  partly  conscious  of  his  isolation  from  other 
objects  and  beings. 


78  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RELIGION. 

And  with  this  growth  of  self-consciousness  comes, 
on   the  one  hand,  a  painful   sense  of  dependence  on 
what  is  not  himself,  and,  on  the  other  hand,  a  desire 
to  aggrandise  himself,  and  make  the  outer  world  sub- 
servient  to   his   satisfaction,    a   desire   not  merely  to 
appropriate  this  or  that  object,  but  even  to  appropriate 
the    whole    universe    to    himself.       Every    self,    once 
awakened,  is  naturally  a  despot,  and  "  bears,  like  the 
Turk,  no  brother  near  the  throne."     The  inner  world 
is  as  great  as  the  outer,  and  everyone,  as  even  Hobbes 
in    spite    of    his    Sensationalism    recognised,    has    an 
'  infinite    desire    for    gain    or    glory ' ;    has,    in    other 
words,   a  desire   that   grows   with    what   it   feeds  on, 
till   it    can    be    satisfied    with    nothing    less    than    a 
whole    universe    for   itself.     The   humorous  and   elo- 
quent   words    in   which    Carlyle   expressed   this    idea 
are  very  well  known,  but  perhaps  I  may  be  allowed 
to  quote  them  once  more  : — 

"  Will  the  whole  finance- ministers  and  upholsterers 
and  confectioners  of  modern  Europe  undertake,  in 
jointstock  company,  to  make  one  shoeblack  hcqj})!/  ? 
They  cannot  accomplish  it  above  an  hour  or  two ; 
for  the  shoeblack  also  has  a  soul,  quite  other  than 
his  stomach,  and  would  require,  if  you  consider  it, 
for  his  permanent  satisfaction  and  saturation,  simply 
this  allotment,  no  more,  and  no  less :  GocTs  infinite 
universe  altogether  to  himself,  therein  to  enjoy  in- 
finitely, and  fill  every  wish  as  fast  as  it  rose.     .     .     . 


THE  DEFINITION  OF  RELIGION.  7!) 

Try  him  with  half  a  universe,  half  of  an  omnipotence, 
he  sets  to  quarrelling  with  the  proprietor  of  the 
other  half,  and  declares  himself  the  most  maltreated 
of  men.  Always  there  is  a  black  spot  in  our  sun- 
shine; it  is  e^'eu,  as  I  said,  the  shadow  of  ourselves.''''  ^ 
But  is  this  all  ?  Are  we  thus  shut  in  between 
an  outward  world  which  limits  us  on  every  side, 
and  a  self  that  we  can  never  satisfy,  and  which 
forces  us  into  an  internecine  struggle  with  all  other 
beings  for  existence  and  for  satisfaction.  To  this 
we  can  only  answer  by  referring  to  the  third  element 
of  our  consciousness — 

"  Unless  above  himself  lie  can 
Exalt  himself,  how  mean  a  thing  is  man." 

There  is  necessarily   present   in    us,   in  virtue  of  the 
,  very  fact  that  our  inner  and  our  outer  lives  stand  in 
'.constant  relation  to  each  other,  the  consciousness  of 
/  a  Being   or  Principle   which   is   above   both,  and  re- 
'.vealed   in   both.      And  the   idea  of  this  Principle  or 
'Being,  just  so  far  as   we  can  realise  it,  or,  in  other 
words,  make  real  to  ourselves  the  thought  of  it,  lifts 
us   at   once   above   the    mere    feeling    of   dependence 
upon  that   which   is    without   us,   and    equally  above 
the  feeling  of  lawless  independence,  and  the  limitless 
'  greed  of  appetite,  which  would  make  us  claim  every- 
thing for  ourselves.      A  human  consciousness  cannot 
1  Sartor  Resartus,  Book  II.  C'li.  ix. 


80  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RELIGION. 

exist  without  some  dawning  of  reverence — of  an  awe 
and  aspiration  which  is  as  different  from  fear  as  it 
is  from  presumption,  from  slavish  submission  as  it 
is  from  tyrannical  self-assertion.  And  it  is  this 
reverence,  this  sense  of  a  subjection  which  elevates 
us,  of  an  obedience  that  makes  us  free,  this  conscious- 
ness of  a  Power  which  curbs  and  humiliates  us,  but 
at  the  same  time  draws  us  up  to  itself,  which  is 
the  essence  of  religion,  and  the  source  of  all  man's 
higher  life. 

Now,  as  I  have  already  said,  it  is  not  always 
easy  to  detect  the  germs  or  imperfect  forms  of  such  a 
consciousness  in  all  the  forms  of  religion  which  have 
appeared  in  different  ages  and  nations.  Nor,  indeed, 
would  it  be  possible  in  many  cases  for  us  to  detect 
them  at  all,  if  it  were  not  for  the  light  thrown 
back  upon  them  by  the  later  development  of  religion 
which  has  come  out  of  them.  Amid  the  sensuali- 
ties of  nature-worship,  the  horrible  sacrifices  offered 
to  gods  who  seem  to  us  the  very  embodiments  of 
cruelty,  revenge,  and  injustice,  and  the  indescrib- 
able follies  of  spirit-scaring  and  witchcraft  which 
we  find  even  in  many  nations  not  altogether  un- 
civilised, where,  it  may  be  asked,  can  we  find  the 
traces  of  that  reverent  awe  and  aspiration  which 
we  have  been  describing,  and  which  are  the  natural 
feelings  of  man  towards  God,  if  God  be  really  the 
Being,  the   consciousness  of  whom   is    to   give    unity 


THE  DEFINITION  OF  RELIGION.  81 

to  our   divided   and    finite   existence,   and   to  lift    us 
above  its  division  and  finitude  ? 

A  full  answer  to  this  objection  it  is  impossible  here 
to  give.  I  can  only  refer  by  anticipation  to  one 
point  which  may  be  verified  by  the  most  superficial 
knowledge  of  the  history  of  religion.  Eeligions  may 
differ  very  widely,  they  may  be  comparatively  ele- 
vated or  they  may  be  what  we  would  call  degraded ; 
but  they  have  this  as  their  common  characteristic 
(at  least  when  they  rise  above  the  vaguest  super- 
stition), that  they  give  a  kind  of  unity  to  life.  And 
they  do  this  mainly  by  at  once  allying  man  with 
nature,  and  joining  him  with  his  fellows  in  some  more 
or  less  comprehensive  society.  They  round  off  the 
world,  so  far  as  it  affects  him,  into  a  whole  which 
is  referred  to  one  principle,  a  principle  which  is 
manifested  at  once  within  the  man  and  without  him, 
and  which  binds  him  in  some  way  both  to  nature  and 
to  his  fellowmen.  Hence  I  said  in  the  first  lecture 
that  a  man's  religion,  if  it  is  sincere,  is  that  conscious- 
ness in  which  he  takes  up  a  definite  attitude  to  the 
world,  and  gathers  to  a  focus  all  the  meaning  of  his 
life.  Of  course,  the  man's  world  may  be,  and  in  earlier 
times  is,  a  comparatively  narrow  one.  He  is  unable 
to  look  beyond  the  nation,  the  clan,  or,  it  may  be,  the 
family  to  which  he  belongs;  nor  can  he  at  this  stage  form 
any  conception  of  nature  in  general,  but  only  of  special 
powers  of  nature,  which  he  regards  as  in  some  way 

VOL.  I.  F 


V 


82  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RELIGION. 

friendly  to  him.  And  so  long  as  this  is  so,  the  unity 
given  to  his  life  b}^  religion  can  only  be  partial  and 
superficial.  His  heaven  may  still  admit  a  multiplicity 
of  gods,  who  are  only  imperfectly  harmonised  or  united 
with  each  other.  Yet  so  far  as  it  goes,  his  religion 
gives  him  a  sense  of  alliance  with  nature  and  man 
under  the  protection  of  a  divine  power  who  is  above 
both,  and  in  both. 

Now  this  is  just  what  we  should  expect,  if  reli- 
gion be  always  the  more  or  less  developed  con- 
sciousness of  that  infinite  unity,  which  is  beyond  all 
the  divisions  of  the  finite,  particularly  the  division 
of  subject  and  object.  We  may  add,  finally,  that  so 
far  as  religion  does  this,  it  is,  in  spite  of  much  error 
and  even  immorality,  a  step  towards  that  consciousness 
of  rest  beyond  the  agitations  of  finite  care,  of  unity 
beyond  the  differences  of  finite  life,  of  eternal  reality 
beyond  the  show  of  a  passing  world,  which  Hegel 
expresses  so  vividly  in  the  introduction  to  his  phil- 
osophy of  religion.  "All  nations  know  that  it  is  the 
religious  consciousness  in  which  they  possess  the 
;  truth ;  and  they  have  therefore  regarded  their  religion 
as  that  which  gives  dignity  and  peace  to  their  lives. 
All  that  awakes  doubt  and  perplexity,  all  sorrow  and 
care,  all  limited  interests  of  finitude,  we  leave  behind 
us  on  the  '  bank  and  shoal  of  time.'  And,  as  on  the 
summit  of  a  mountain,  removed  from  all  hard  distinct- 
ness of  detail,  we  calmly  overlook  the  limitations  of 


THE  DEFINITION  OF  RELIGION.  83 

the  landscape  and  the  world,  so  by  religion  we  are 
lifted  above  all  the  obstructions  of  tinitude.  In 
relioion,  therefore,  man  beholds  his  own  existence  in 
a  transfigured  reflexion,  in  which  all  the  divisions,  all 
the  crude  lights  and  shadows  of  the  world,  are  softened 
into  eternal  peace  under  the  beams  of  a  spiritual  sun. 
It  is  in  this  native  land  of  the  spirit  that  the  waters 
of  oblivion  flow,  from  which  it  is  given  to  Psyche 
to  drink  and  forget  all  her  sorrow\s ;  for  here  the 
darkness  of  life  becomes  a  transparent  dream-image, 
through  which  the  light  of  eternity  shines  in  upon  us." 


LECTUEE  FOUKTH. 

THE    IDEA    OF    THE    INFINITE    AS    DEFINED    BY    PROFESSOR 
MAX  MiJLLER  AND  MR.  HERBERT  SPENCER. 

Essential  Unity  of  the  Religious  Idea  in  different  Stages  of  its 
Development — Statement  of  the  views  of  Professor  Max  Miiller 
and  Mr.  Herbert  Spencer — Three  Possible  Conceptions  of  the 
Infinite — Criticism  of  the  Conception  of  the  Infinite  as  a 
'Beyond.^  or  Negative  of  the  Finite — Criticism  of  the  Conception 
of  the  Infinite  as  the  Positive  Basis  and  Presupposition  of  the 
Finite — Relation  of  Mr.  Spencer's  view  to  that  of  Spinoza — That 
the  Infinite,  as  Presupposition  and  Principle  of  the  Finite, 
cannot  be  unhiowable. 

In  the  last  lecture  I  attempted  to  give  a  general 
idea  of  religion,  and  at  the  same  time  to  meet  one 
or  two  obvious  objections  which  naturally  present 
themselves,  when  we  attempt  to  verify  such  an  idea 
by  the  actual  history  of  religion.  I  maintained  that 
the  consciousness  of  God,  or  at  least  the  principle 
out  of  which  the  consciousness  of  God  arises,  is  as 
truly  one  of  the  primary  elements  of  our  intelligence 
as  the  consciousness  of  the  object  or  the  conscious- 
ness  of   the    self      Thus    all    our    knowledge   of   the 


THE  IDEA  OF  THE  INFINITE.  85 

objective  world  and  all  our  knowledge  of  ourselves, 
presupposes  the  idea  of  God ;  though  it  is  equally 
true  that,  just  because  it  is  the  presupposition  of  all 
other  knowledge,  it  is  the  last  thing  on  which  we 
reflect,  or  which  we  try  to  exjDlain  to  ourselves.  This 
becomes  manifest  if  we  consider  that  our  whole  life, 
theoretical  and  practical,  turns  on  the  opposition 
and  relation  between  objects  without  and  the  self 
within  us.  To  reproduce  in  our  minds  the  order 
and  system  of  the  objective  world,  and  to  realise 
in  the  objective  world  the  ends  determined  for  us 
by  our  nature  as  self-conscious  beings,  is  the  sum 
and  substance  of  our  earthly  existence.  But  both 
these  movements  presuppose  an  ultimate  unity,  which 
reveals  itself  both  in  the  self  and  the  not-self,  and 
in  all  the  intercourse  that  goes  on  between  them. 
Thus,  beneath  and  beyond  what  we  may  call  our 
secular  consciousness  in  all  its  forms,  beneath  and 
beyond  all  our  consciousness  of  finite  objects  and  of  the 
subjective  interests  and  desires  that  bind  us  to  them, 
there  is  always  a  religious  consciousness,  the  conscious- 
ness of  an  infinite  or  Divine  Being  who  is  the  source 
of  all  existence  and  of  all  knowledge,  and  in  whom  we 
and  all  things  "  live  and  move  and  have  our  being." 

Eelioion,  on  this  view  of  it,  arises  in  man  because 
his  consciousness  of  himself  in  distinction  from,  and 
relation  to  the  world  without  him  always  implies 
that   he   transcends    both,   and    that    he    looks    down 


86  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RELIGION. 

upon  both — upon  himself  as  well  as  upon  that  which 
is  not  himself- — from  the  point  of  view  of  an  all- 
embracing  unity.  Thus  we  are  not  confined  to 
any  object  of  perception  that  is  before  us,  but  are 
ahU  to  raise  our  thoughts  above  it,  and  to  put  it  in 
its  proper  relation  to  other  objects  that  are  not 
immediately  present  to  us.  Nay,  to  a  certain  ex- 
tent we  are  oblvjcd,  as  rational  l)eings,  to  do  this. 
We  cannot  gaze  like  a  dumb  animal  at  the  object 
of  sense,  as  if  there  were  nothing  in  the  world  beyond 
it.  Inevitably,  in  a  moment,  our  imagination  or 
our  reason  carries  us  beyond  it,  and  almost  without 
our  being  aware  of  any  movement  of  our  thought, 
we  have  formed  some  conception  of  it,  which  binds 
it  to  other  things  and  makes  it  a  link  in  the 
general  connexion  of  experience.  And  it  is  the 
same  with  our  own  inner  life.  The  feeling  of  the 
moment  can  be  nothing  to  us  apart  from  its  relation 
to  the  past  and  the  future:  we  cannot  be  conscious 
of  it  without  being  carried  beyond  it,  and  regarding  it 
as  a  stage  in  a  continuous  life.  Nay,  we  are  obliged  to 
view  our  own  lives  as  parts  of  a  wider  and  more  compre- 
hensive life.  We  cannot  fix  our  minds  upon  ourselves 
'as  individuals  without  regarding  ourselves  as  con- 
stituents of  a  greater  whole — as  members  in  a  society 
and  parts  of  the  system  of  the  world.  In  apprehending 
ourselves,  we  can,  nay,  to  a  certain  extent  we  must, 
rise   above   ourselves,    and    treat    our   own    individual 


THE  IDEA   OF  THE  INFINITE.  87 

existence  as  if  it  were  no  more  to  us  than  that  of 
any  other  being  to  whom  we  are  brought  into 
relation.  To  do  this  thoroughly  and  systematically, 
indeed, — in  knoivlcdfje_  to  get  rid  of  subjective  views 
and  to  look  at  all  particular  objects  from  the 
point  of  view  of  the  whole,  and  in  inactice,  to 
devote  ourselves  to  the  good  of  that  whole,  to 
make  ourselves  the  instruments  of  the  great  organ- 
ism of  which  we  are  members — would  be  to  attain 
the  highest  intellectual  and  moral  ideal  we  can  con- 
ceive. But  the  capacity  for  such  universal  life  is 
the  birth-right  of  every  rational  being ;  and  every  one 
who  has  shown  himself  a  rational  being  has  begun 
to  realise  it.  It  is  the  strange  paradox  of  the  spiritual 
life,  that  to  be  a  self  is  at  once  to  be  one  finite 
individual  among  other  finite  individuals  and  things, 
and  to  reach  beyond  the  individuality  not  only  of  all 
otlier  things  and  beings  but  even  of  ourselves ;  for  we  | 
can  neither  know  nor  act  without  thus  transcending 
ourselves.  But  thus  to  go  beyond  our  own  indi- 
viduality and  all  mere  individuality  is  already  to 
apprehend  in  some  way  that  which  is  universal  and 
divine.  Hence,  in  all  his  secular  consciousness  of 
other  objects  and  of  himself,  man  is  necessarily 
haunted  by  the  idea  of  something  which  is  beyond 
them,  yet  in  them — something  in  opposition  to  which 
they  are  as  nothing,  in  unity  with  which  they  are 
more  than  they  immediately  seem  to  be. 


88  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RELIGION. 

Now  the  main  difficulty  in  realising  the  truth  of 
this  view  is  the  same  which  meets  us  in  all  appli- 
cations of  the  idea  of  development.  It  is  hard  to 
trace  in  the  earlier  forms  of  religion  anything  that 
corresponds  to  the  idea  which  we  maintain  to  be 
the  spring  of  that  development,  the  idea  of  an  all- 
embracing  power  which  is  at  once  beyond  all  objects 
and  all  subjects,  which  through  all  divisions  of  the 
finite  world  "  spreads  undivided,  operates  unspent," 
which  remains  as  the  permanent  basis  of  man's  life, 
unchanged  through  all  his  conflict  with  nature, 
with  his  fellowmen,  and  with  himself,  and  which  is 
ever  bringing  the  struggle  and  tumult  of  his  finite 
existence  back  into  peace  again.  And  it  will  be  no 
small  part  of  our  work  in  the  sequel  to  trace  out 
the  various  forms  in  which  this  idea  disguises  itself 
from  us  in  different  religions.  Here,  I  can  only 
refer  by  anticipation  to  the  fact  that  religion, 
wherever  it  shows  itself  in  any  definite  form,  gives 
harmony  and  direction  to  man's  life  in  two  ways — 
(1)  it  delivers  him  from  himself  and  the  difficulties 
of  his  immediate  life  by  reverence  for  that  which 
is  above  him;  and  (2)  it  teaches  him  to  regard  that 
power  which  he  thus  reverences  as  manifested  both 
in  nature  and  in  the  society  to  which  he  as  an 
individual  belongs.  Wherever  we  find  these  two 
things  in  a  religion,  we  may  safely  assert  that,  in 
spite  of  the  dark  superstitions  and  immoral  practices 


THE  IDEA   OF  THE  INFINITE.  89 

with  which  it  may  be  united,  it  brin.i^^s  unity  to  the 
life  of  man.  And  we  are  prepared  to  recognise  it 
as  a  step  towards  that  consciousness  of  a  divine 
unity  beneath  all  the  divisions  of  finitude  of  which 
we  have  been  speaking,  or,  in  other  words,  as  a 
step  in  the  development  of  that  religious  conscious-^ 
ness  of  which  even  the  highest  religion  is  an  im- 
perfect expression. 

The  idea  of  religion  we  have  thus  reached  may 
be  rendered  more  clearly  intelligible,  if  we  compare  it 
with  certain  other  views  of  religion,  which  have  been 
taken  by  distinguished  modern  writers.  Professor 
Max  Miiller  has  maintained  that  the  principle  of 
religion  lies  in  the  consciousness  of  the  infinite.  This 
consciousness  is,  he  asserts,  the  opposite  counterpart 
to  the  consciousness  of  the  finite  as  such,  for  "  limi- 
tation and  finitude  in  whatever  sense  we  use  them, 
always  implies  a  something  heyond.  .  .  .  Beyond 
every  limit,  we  must  always  take  it  for  granted 
that  there  is  something  else.  But  what  is  the 
reason  of  this  ?  The  reason  why  we  cannot  conceive 
an  absolute  limit  is  because  we  never  perceive  an 
absolute  limit ;  or,  in  other  words,  because,  in  per- 
ceiving the  finite,  w'e  always  perceive  the  infinite 
also."  "  If  we  perceive  a  square,  the  only  way  we 
can  perceive  it  is  by  perceiving  the  space  beyond 
the  square.  If  we  perceive  the  horizon,  we  per- 
ceive  at    the    same    time    that    which    hems    in   our 


90  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RELIGION. 

senses  from  going  beyond  the  horizon.  There  is  no 
limit  which  has  not  two  sides,  one  turned  towards 
us,  the  other  turned  towards  that  which  is  beyond : 
and  it  is  this  Bcijond,  which  from  the  earliest  days 
has  formed  the  only  real  foundation  for  all  that 
we  call  transcendental  in  our  perceptual  as  well  as 
in  our  conceptual  knowledge,  though  it  has  no 
doubt  been  peopled  with  the  manifold  creations  of 
the  poetic  imagination."  Professor  Max  Miiller  goes 
on  to  refer  to  the  infinite  of  time  and  the  infinite 
series  of  causation  as  other  illustrations  of  the  same 
principle,  the  principle  that  any  limit  we  take  is 
always  in  relation  to  a  yet  undetermined  '  Beyond.' 
And  when  it  is  objected  to  this  view  of  religion 
that  the  idea  of  the  infinite  is  an  abstraction  to 
which  primitive  man  is  not  capable  of  rising,  Pro- 
fessor Max  Miiller  answers  that  in  saying  that 
this  is  the  fandamcntal  idea  in  religion,  he  does 
not  mean  that  the  religious  consciousness  has  in 
all  ages  and  nations  carried  with  it  the  explicit  idea  \ 
of  the  infinite,  as  such,  i.e.  the  idea  of  the  infinite/ y 
as  he  defines  it ;  but  merely  that  the  idea  of  Godf  / 
has  in  all  times  tended  to  attach  itself  to  objects ' 
which  cannot  be  completely  grasped  in  sensuous 
perception  or  imagination,  to  objects  which,  as  it 
were,  strain  our  apprehensive  faculty  whenever  we 
try  to  gather  them  into  the  unity  of  one  idea. 
Hence  he  declares,  with  doubtful  accuracy,  that  there 


THE  IDEA  OE  THE  INFINITE.  91 

are  things  too  limited  and  too  easily  apprehended 
for  men  to  make  gods  of  them.  "  A  stone  is  not 
infinite,  nor  a  shell,  nor  a  dog,  and  hence  they  have 
no  '  thcogonic  ca'pacity.'  But  a  river  or  a  mountain, 
and  still  more  the  sky  or  the  dawn,  possess  theo- 
gonic  capacity,  because  they  have  in  themselves 
from  the  beginning  something  going  beyond  the 
limits  of  sensuous  perception,  something  which,  for 
want  of  a  better  word,  I  must  continue  to  call 
inlinite."  ^ 

1  Natural  Religion,  p.  122  seq.  It  would  be  easy  to  attack 
the  instances  here  given,  and  to  show  that  men  have  wor- 
shipped every  one  of  the  objects  to  which  Professor  Max 
Miiller  denies  all  '  theogonic  capacity.'  And  it  might  farther 
be  maintained  that  the  worship  of  dogs  and  other  animals 
may  show  a  deeper  consciousness  of  the  infinite  than  that 
which  finds  the  manifestation  of  it  in  a  mere  physical  vast- 
ness  that  reaches  beyond  the  immediate  grasp  of  sense. 

But  there  is  a  still  more  vital  objection.  Professor  Max 
Miiller  here  allows  that  the  consciousness  of  the  infinite  is 
not  explicit  in  the  earliest  religions;  and  in  doing  so,  he  alto- 
gether destroys  the  claim  of  his  own  definition.  For,  if  we 
have  a  right  to  consider  what  is  implicit,  i.e.  that  which 
exists  in  germ  in  the  lowest  religion  and  is  developed  oi- 
made  fully  explicit  only  in  the  highest,  we  cannot  stop  at 
such  an  idea  of  the  infinite  as  Professor  Max  Miiller  gives 
us,  the  idea  of  a  mere  '  Beyond,'  or  negative  of  any  given 
limit.  For  this  idea,  as  will  immediately  be  shown,  corre- 
sponds to  a  stage  in  the  history  of  religion  which  is  neither 
the  first  nor  the  last,  a  stage  at  which  the  religious  con- 
sciousness has  become  reflective,  but  in  which  reflexion  has 
not  yet  done  its  perfect  work.  And  there  can  be  no  reason 
for  deriving  the  definition   of  religion   from  such  a  transition 


92  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RELIGION. 

Looking  at  these  statements  and  illustrations,  Profes- 
sor Max  Miiller  would  seem  to  mean  that  we  can  become 
conscious  of  things  only  as  we  limit  them,  and  that 
we  cannot  limit  them  without  going  beyond  the  limit. 
All  things  determined  as  in  space  and  time,  are  deter- 
mined as  against  a  '  Beyond.'  All  definition  is  in 
relation  to  a  wider  undefined.  And  it  is  just  in  this 
relation  that  we  must  find  the  secret  cause  of  worship 
or  religious  reverence,  the  object  of  such  reverence 
being  always  either  the  infinite,  the  '  Beyond '  in 
general,  or  at  least  some  object  which,  because  it 
seems  to  the  worshipper  to  transcend  all  his  measure- 
ment, is  for  him  identified  with  the  infinite. 

Now  before  criticising  this  view,  I  would  like  to 
compare  it  with  another  view  which,  though  not 
identical,  is  closely  akin  to  it — the  view  of  Mr. 
Spencer.  Mr.  Spencer  also  asserts  that  the  proper 
object  of  religion  is  the  infinite  or  unconditioned. 
And  he  maintains  farther  that  this  infinite  or  uncon- 
ditioned, though  in  itself  unknown  and  even  unknow- 
able, is  yet  involved  or  presupposed  in   all  that   we 

stage  in  its  development.  On  the  other  hand,  if  we  are 
bonnd  to  base  our  definition  on  that  which  is  common  to  all 
religions,  and  which  therefore  exists  explicitly  even  in  the 
earliest  or  lowest  forms  of  religion,  we  should  be  reduced,  as 
Professor  Max  Miiller  allows,  to  something  lower  than  his  or 
any  idea  of  the  infinite.  Professor  Max  Miiller's  definition 
thus  gives  us  neither  what  is  involved  in  the  idea  of  religion 
nor  what  is  common  to  all  religions. 


THE  IDEA  OF  THE  INFINITE.  93 

know.      All  definite  thought,  all  distinct  determination 
of  objects,  is  within  the  circle  of  an  unconditioned  real- 
ity, which  cannot  be  directly  perceived  or  thought  by 
us,  except  as  the  presupposition  of  all  other  perception 
or  thought.     Mr.   Spencer's  first  principles,  therefore, 
begin  with  a  theory  of  the  Infinite  or  Absolute,  which, 
according  to  him,  is  the  true  object  of  religion.      Of 
this  Infinite  or  Absolute  he  attempts  to  prove  at  once 
that  it  is  unknowable,  and  yet  that  we  have  a  kind 
of  consciousness  of  it  which   precludes  all  reasonable 
doubt  of  its  reality.      It   is  uniknowahlc  ;   for,  as   Mr. 
Spencer  repeats  after  Mansel,  to  know  is  to  distinguish 
and  to  relate,  and  therefore  the  object  of  knowledge 
can  never  be  that  which  is  unlimited  and  unrelated. 
Yet   we  are   forced  to   hdievc   in   it,  because   a  limit 
always  implies  a  distinction  of  parts  within  a  whole 
which  is  itself  unlimited  ;    and  a  relation  is  a  con- 
nexion of  factors,  botli  of  which  belong  to  a  totality 
which   is   itself  unrelated.      He   therefore  rejects   the 
view  of  Mansel  that  the  Infinite  and  Absolute  cannot 
be  present  to  us  in  consciousness  at  all.      "  The  error," 
says  Mr.  Spencer,  "  (very  naturally  fallen  into  by  philo- 
sophers intent  on  demonstrating  the  limits  and  con- 
ditions  of  consciousness),  consists    in   assuming    that 
consciousness   has  nothing   hut   limits  and  conditions, 
to  the  entire   neglect   of   that  which   is  limited   and 
conditioned.      It  is  forgotten  that  there  is  something 
which  alike  forms  the  raw  material  of  definite  thought, 


94  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RELIGION. 

and  remains  after  the  definiteness  which  thought  gives 
it  has  been  destroyed.  We  are  conscious  of  the 
relative  as  existing  under  conditions  and  limits ;  it  is 
impossible  that  these  conditions  can  be  thought  of 
apart  from  that  something  to  which  they  give  the  form  : 
the  abstraction  of  these  limits  and  conditions  is  by 
hypothesis  the  abstraction  of  them  only ;  consequently, 
there  must  be  a  residuary  consciousness  of  something 
which  filled  up  these  outlines,  and  this  indefinite  some- 
thing constitutes  our  consciousness  of  the  non-relative 
and  absolute."  Or  again  :  "  Our  notion  of  the  limited 
is  composed,  firstly,  of  a  consciousness  of  some  kind  of 
hdwj ;  and,  secondly,  of  a  consciousness  of  the  limits 
under  which  it  is  known.  In  the  antithetical  notion 
of  the  unlimited,  the  consciousness  of  limits  is  abol- 
ished, but  not  the  consciousness  of  some  kind  of  being. 
It  is  quite  true  that  in  the  absence  of  conceived  limits 
this  consciousness  ceases  to  be  a  conception  properly 
so  called" — in  other  words,  it  ceases  to  be  knowledge 
in  the  full  sense  of  the  term — "  but  it  is  none  the  less 
true  that  it  remains  a  mode  of  consciousness. "^  Hence 
Mr.  Spencer  denies  that  the  idea  of  the  absolute  and 
infinite  and  unconditioned  is  negative,  and  maintains 
that,  on  the  contrary,  it  is  the  positive  basis  of  all  our 
consciousness  of  the  relative,  the  finite,  and  the  con- 
ditioned. It  is,  so  to  speak,  the  blank  background  on 
which  we  draw  lines  of  division,  or  from  which  we  cut 
1  First  Principles,  p.  90  seq. 


THE  IDEA   OE  THE  INFn\ITE.  95 

off'  parts,  when  we  try  to  determine  the  finite ;  it  is 
the  empty  space  in  which  we  describe  our  figures.  In 
this  consciousness  of  an  unknowable  reality,  which  is 
out  of  all  limits  and  conditions,  and  which  accompanies 
and  underlies  all  our  other  consciousness,  we  have  the 
permanent  basis  of  religion,  the  element  which  gives 
all  the  truth  they  have  to  the  religions  of  the  world, 
and  which  alone  will  survive  when  science  has 
destroyed  the  illusions  and  superstitions  by  which 
they  are  overgrown. 

From  this  short  abstract  of  the  views  of  these  two 
writers,  it  appears  that  there  is  a  general  basis  of 
agreement  between  them,  but  also  a  difference  of  no  little 
importance.  Professor  Max  Milller  and  Mr.  Spencer' 
agree  in  conceiving  the  infinite  as  the  correlate  or  coun- 
terpart of  the  finite,  but  the  former  thinks  of  it  as  a 
Beyond,  to  which  the  mind  always  reaches  out  from 
the  limits  of  the  finite,  while  the  latter  rather  thinks 
of  it  as  the  presupposition  from  which  all  determination 
of  the  finite  starts.  To  the  former  the  infinite  is  the 
postcrius  of  all  positive  knowledge,  like  the  indeter- 
mined  space  which  stretches  beyond  every  limit  we 
attain ;  to  the  latter  it  is  the  prius  of  all  positive 
knowledge,  like  the  indetermined  space  which  is  pre- 
supposed in  the  definition  of  special  figures.  To  the 
former  the  infinite  is  never  given,  except  as  the  nega- 
tive of  everything  that  is  positively  known ;  to  the 
latter  it  is  always  given,  in  a  primary  positive  con- 


96  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RELIGION. 

sciousness  which  we  must  have  ere  we  can  know  any- 
thing else.  The  former  takes  his  stand  on  the  finite 
as  the  affirmatively  determined  reality,  which,  however, 
in  its  limited  character  always  implies  something 
beyond  that  we  cannot  so  determine ;  while  the  latter 
takes  his  stand  on  the  infinite  as  the  affirmative  basis 
of  all  our  knowledge — knowledge,  that  is,  conceived  as 
a  process  of  limiting  the  infinite  by  negatives. 

Now,  in  this  and  the  following  lecture,  I  shall 
attempt  to  show  that  Professor  Max  Miiller  and 
Mr.  Spencer  have  each  taken  hold  of  one  half  of 
the  truth,  but  have  destroyed  its  virtue  by  rending 
it  from  the  other  half  Or,  what  is  the  same  thing 
in  another  aspect  of  it,  they  have  each  taken  the 
idea  of  God  or  of  the  infinite  at  a  particular  stage 
of  its  development,  and  have  refused  to  follow  the 
movement  of  thought  any  farther.  Let  me  first 
put  generally  and  abstractly  what  afterwards  will  be 
more  fully  explained.  Professor  Max  Miiller 's  in- 
finite is  the  bare  negation  of  the  finite.  It  is 
therefore  only  another  finite ;  for  it  is  limited  by 
that  which  it  denies,  and  in  relation  to  which  alone 
it  has  any  meaning.  Mr.  Spencer  seems  at  first  to 
escape  from  this  immediate  self-contradiction  by 
taking  the  infinite  as  the  affirmative  basis  of  the 
finite,  the  indetermined  Being  which  has  no  limits 
in  itself,  but  only  receives  them  from  without,  from 
our    intelligence.       But    this    pure    affirmative    basis 


THE  IDEA   OF  THE  INFINITE.  97 

turns  out  on  examination  to  be  a  blank  unknow- 
able, of  which  we  can  only  say  that  it  is,  and  of 
which  we  can  say  so  much  only  in  contrast  with 
the  negative  nature  of  the  iinite.  In  truth,  whether 
we  take  the  infinite  as  the  negative  of  the  finite, 
or  as  the  affirmative  basis  on  which  the  finite  is 
determined  by  negation,  we  arrive  at  the  same  result. 
The  only  difference  is  that  in  the  former  case  we  add 
the  infinite  to  the  finite,  while  in  the  latter  case  we  n 
add  the  finite  to  the  infinite.  In  both  cases  the 
addition  is  merely  external,  and  in  both  cases  our 
infinite  becomes  itself  a  finite,  because  it  is  only 
the  correlate  of  the  finite.  Meanwhile,  we  lose  the 
true  idea  of  the  infinite,  of  which  I  began  to  speak 
in  the  last  lecture,  as  the  unity  which  reveals  itself 
in  all  the  differences  of  the  finite,  especially  in  the  last 
difference  of  subject  and  object,  and  which  through 
all  these  differences  remains  in  unity  with  itself. 
And  if,  as  was  there  maintained,  this  is  just  the  idea 
upon  which  religion  rests,  we  at  the  same  time  lose 
the  clue  to  the  interpretation  of  the  history  of  religion. 
Such  an  abstract  statement  as  this  can,  however, 
carry  little  conviction  to  those  who  are  not  con- 
vinced already;  and  I  shall  therefore  attempt  suc- 
cessively to  show  what  is  the  element  of  truth  and 
what  is  the  defect  in  each  of  these  views,  and  to 
illustrate  what  I  conceive  to  be  the  true  idea  by 
contrast  with   both. 

VOL.  I.  G 


<)8  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RELIGION. 

There  are  many  things  which,  at  first,  seem  to  lend 
support  to  the  view  of  Professor  Max  Miiller  that 
religion  rests  on  or  starts  from  the  conception  of 
the  Infinite,  as  the  '  Beyond '  or  negative  of  the 
finite.  Such  at  least  may  be  admitted  to  be  the 
first  reficdive  form  in  which  the  idea  presents  itself 
to  our  minds.  We  first  discover  the  Infinite  in  the, 
impossibility  of  being  satisfied  with  the  finite,  or  limiting! 
our  thoughts  to  it.  Just  because  the  idea  of  an  infinite 
or  unconditioned  principle  of  unity  which  underlies 
all  the  differences  of  the  objects  we  apprehend,  is  the 
silent  presupposition  of  all  our  thought,  we  are  unable 
finally  to  rest  in  any  one  of  these  objects  as  an  absolute 
reality,  i.e.,  a  reality  which  does  not  need  to  be  referred 
to  anything  else  as  its  source  or  explanation.  Hence, 
even  before  any  general  idea  of  the  Infinite  makes 
its  appearance,  we  find  traces  of  the  tendency,  of 
which  Professor  Max  Miiller  speaks,  to  select  objects 
of  worship  which  cannot  be  completely  grasped  by 
the  senses  or  the  imagination.  The  physical  vast- 
ness  of  the  heavens,  the  irresistible  strength  of  the 
elemental  forces  of  nature,  may  awe  and  elevate  the 
soul  that  is  not  yet  able  to  attach  its  emotion 
except  to  some  outward  form.  Hence  the  worship 
of  such  objects  may  indicate  a  stage  of  religious 
experience  in  which  the  thought  of  God  is,  so  to 
speak,  outgrowing  the  possibility  of  being  confined 
to   any   object   whatsoever.      And   when   this   is   the 


THE  IDEA  OF  THE  INFINITE.  99 

case,  the  development  of  religion  may  be  expected 
soon  to  bring  with  it  a  consciousness  that  even  such 
forms  are  measurable  and  limited,  and  that  neither 
they  nor  any  other  objective  forms  are  fit  to  receive 
the  stamp  of  divinity.  The  divine  presence  vanishes 
from  the  outward  world,  and  the  religious  consciousness 
is  driven  out  upon  the  '  vague  and  formless  infinite.' 
which  is  merely  the  negative  counterpart  of  the  finite 
reality.  Thus  nothing  is  left  to  which  the  religious 
sentiment  can  attach  itself  but  the  dim  idea  of  some- 
thing 'beyond,'  to  which  no  form  or  name  can  be  given, 
because  the  moment  we  attempt  to  define  it,  we  lose  it. 
Religion  becomes  a  kind  of  divine  discontent  with  all 
that  is  attained  or  attainable,  and  an  endless  aspiration 
after  something  which,  from  the  very  idea  of  it,  never 
can  be  reached,  the  longing  for  a  morrow  that  never 
comes,  the  effort  to  reach  '  a  margin '  that  "  fades  for 
ever  and  for  ever  as  we  move."  It  becomes  a  vague 
yearning  for  we  know  not  what — 

"  The  desire  of  the  moth  for  the  star 
Of  the  night  for  the  morrow, 
The  devotion  to  something  afar 
From  the  sphere  of  our  sorrow." 

Now  I  shall  not  deny  that  there  is  an  element  of 
the  truth  in  this  view.  Eeligion  does  lift  us  above  the 
immediate  present,  and  joins  our  existence  to  an  ideal 
that  is  never  perfectly  realised  in  it.  But,  if  we 
make    this   ideal   the  mere    negative    of   all    that    is 


100  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RELIGION. 

actual,  it  ceases  to  have  any  meaning.  The  infinite, 
conceived  as  a  mere  '  beyond,'  the  mere  negation  of 
any  limit  or  determination  that  may  be  given,  is 
what  the  Germans  call  a  false  or  bad  infinite.  It 
is,  indeed,  little  more  than  the  bare  word  "  Not " ; 
and,  to  any  one  who  realised  what  it  meant,  it 
would  be  impossible  to  bow  the  knee  to  it.  If  men 
ever  appear  to  worship  a  being,  whose  only  predicate 
is  the  absence  of  all  predicates,  it  is  because  they 
take  it  for  more  than  it  is ;  they  intend  another 
infinite  than  that  of  which  they  seem  to  speak. 
Wliat  causes  the  illusion  is  that  at  first  we  rise 
from  the  finite  to  the  infinite  hy  negation,  and  there- 
fore become  conscious  of  the  latter  as  that  which 
is  altogether  opposed  to  the  former.  Hence  heaven 
is  defined,  in  the  first  instance,  only  as  that  which 
earth  is  not ;  and  men  seem  to  be  religious,  rather 
because  the  world  is  not  enough  for  them,  than 
because  they  know  what  else  they  want.  Eeligion 
is  but  an  altar  reared  by  unsatisfied  and  insatiable 
hearts  to  the  unknown  God,  who  is  in  some  incon- 
ceivable way  to  find  means  to  satisfy  them — 

"Ah,  love,  could  you  and  I  with  Him  conspire 
To  grasp  this  sorry  Scheme  of  things  entire, 
Would  we  not  shatter  it  to  bits, — and  then 
Remould  it  nearer  to  the  heart's  desire."  ^ 

But,  though  in  this  way  we  at  first  become  con- 
^  Fitzgerald's  Omar  Khayyam. 


THE  IDEA  OF  THE  INFINITE.  101 

scious  of  the  infinite  merely  as  that  which  goes 
beyond  the  finite,  this  is  not  the  true  relation  of 
the  two  ideas.  The  infinite  as  a  mere  '  beyond '  or 
negation  of  limits,  ultimately  carries  us  back  to 
another  idea  as  its  explanation  and  source,  the  idea 
of  an  infinite  which  is  not  merely  the  negative  of 
the  finite  but  its  positive  presupposition.  In  fact, 
the  negative  conception  of  the  infinite  presupposes 
a  positive  conception  of  it.  For  the  effort  to  escape 
from  the  limits  of  the  finite  is  possible  only  to 
a  thought  which  in  some  way  apprehends  that 
which  is  not  finite.  To  know  our  limits,  and  to 
be  striving  against  them,  would  be  impossible,  if 
the  infinite  we  sought  were  not  already  in  some 
way  present  to  us :  nor  could  we  ever  be  conscious 
of  the  '  world's  constraint  on  our  aspirant  souls,'  if 
we  were  really  and  entirely  confined  to  our  prison- 
house.  From  this  it  follows  that  the  idea  of  the 
infinite  as  a  mere  'beyond'  is  an  imperfect  thought, 
a  thought  which  does  not  realise  its  own  meaning  ; 
for,  if  our  consciousness  of  the  finite  did  not  pre- 
suppose the  idea  of  the  infinite,  and  were  not  based 
on  it,  we  could  not  seek  for  the  latter  beyond  the 
former.  This  pursuit  of  a  shadow  that  seems  to  fly 
before  us,  is  really  due  to  an  imperfect  consciousness 
of  that  which  is  ever  with  us  and  within  us,  that 
without  which  we  could  not  be  conscious  of  any 
object,  or  even  of  ourselves.      We  are  seeking  abroad 


102  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RELIGION. 

for  that  which  we  can  only  find  at  home,  and  which 
we  could  not  even  seek,  if  we  did  not,  in  a  sense, 
already  and  continually  possess  it.  For  in  the  isolated 
consciousness  of  the  finite,  whether  it  be  of  ourselves 
as  finite,  or  of  any  other  object,  we  are  estranged 
from  ourselves,  blind  to  our  own  real  nature,  and 
unconscious  of  that  which  yet  we  imply  in  every 
word  we  say  and  every  action  which  we  do.  We 
are,  above  all,  in  want  of  a  Socrates  to  call  our 
attention  to  the  universal  basis  of  our  existence, 
and  to  force  us  to  understand  ourselves.  For,  if 
the  infinite  is  just  the  all-embracing  unity  implied 
in  all  our  consciousness  of  the  finite,  it  is  possible 
that  the  attempt  to  bring  it  within  our  knowledge, 
or  to  make  it  the  principle  of  our  action,  may  be 
surrounded  with  difficulties  of  its  own ;  but,  at  any 
rate,  in  seeking  it  we  are  not  condemned  to  strain 
after  something  which  is  far  off,  still  less  to  pursue 
a  phantom  which  must  always  escape  from  our  grasp, 
but  only  to  return  upon  ourselves  and  to  recognise 
what  is  involved  in  our  simplest  consciousness  of 
ourselves,  or,  indeed,  of  any  other  object.  We  do 
not  need  to  "go  up  into  heaven,"  or  to  "descend  into 
the  deep,"  for  "  that  which  is  very  near  us  in  our 
mouth  and  in  our  heart." 

We  have  now  to  ask  whether  Mr.  Spencer  in  his 
idea  of  the  infinite  supplies  the  element  which  was 
lacking  to  the  view  of  Professor  Max  Midler.      In  one 


THE  IDEA  OF  THE  INFINITE.  103 

aspect  of  his  theory  he  seems  to  do  so ;  for  he  regards 
the  infinite  not  as  the  '  Beyond  '  or  negative  of  the 
finite,  but  as  the  positive  presupposition  from  which 
we  must  start  in  determining  it.  In  this  he  seems  to 
be  following  out  one  of  the  most  characteristic  con- 
ceptions of  the  founder  of  modern  philosophy.  "  It 
ought  not,"  says  Descartes  in  his  Meditations,  "  to  be 
supposed  that  we  perceive  the  infinite  only  by  negation 
of  the  finite,  as  we  perceive  rest  and  darkness  only  by 
the  negation  of  motion  and  light.  On  the  contrary, 
we  discern  that  there  is  more  of  reality  in  the  infinite 
than  in  the  finite  substance,  and  therefore  that  in  some 
sense  the  idea  of  the  infinite  is  prior  to  that  of  the 
finite."  The  infinite  is  pure  affirmative  Being  without 
any  mixture  of  not-being  ;  hence  in  becoming  conscious 
of  finite  things  we  always  presuppose  and  partly  negate 
the  infinite.  The  ultimate  consequences  of  this  way 
of  thinking  were  shown  in  the  next  generation  by 
the  greatest  of  the  followers  of  Descartes.  "  All  deter- 
mination," said  Spinoza,  "is  or  involves  negation,"  and 
negation  corresponds  to  unreality.  To  reach  the  pure 
reality  of  God  or  the  infinite,  we  must  therefore  undo 
(or  negate)  our  negations,  we  must  set  aside  the  un- 
reality which  necessarily  introduces  itself  into  our  con- 
sciousness of  the  finite.  We  must  seek  for  the  ab- 
solute reality  in  that  which,  as  it  is  entirely  without 
determinations  or  predicates,  is  untainted  by  any 
negation,     finitude,    or    imperfection.       Spinoza    thus 


104<  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RELIGION. 

reaches  the  supreme  reality  of  God  by  denying  the 
reality  of  everything  else ;  for  all  the  limitations  or 
lines  of  division  by  which  one  finite  existence  is 
distinguished  from  another  are  regarded  by  him  as  the 
products  of  an  illusive  mode  of  thought,  which  we 
must  discard  in  order  to  reach  the  truth  of  things. 
Hence,  in  the  continually  widening  vortex  of  his 
abstraction,  all  definite  outlines  at  last  disappear ; 
all  distinction  of  material  substances  is  merged  in 
the  continuity  of  one  infinite  extension,  and  all 
distinction  of  minds  in  the  continuity  of  one  infinite 
thought ;  and  even  this  last  distinction  of  extension 
and  thought,  or,  as  we  should  say,  of  object  and 
subject,  is  declared  to  be  a  distinction  without  a 
difference :  for  extension  and  thought  are  nothing 
but  forms  under  which  the  one  substance,  in  itself 
without  difference  or  division,  is  manifested  to  our 
intelligence.  Hence  Hegel  rightly  answered  those 
who  accused  Spinoza  of  atheism,  by  saying  that  he  was 
not  an  atheist  but  an  "akosmist";  it  was  not  God, 
but  the  world  of  finite  things  whose  reality  he  denied. 
Now  it  is  easy  to  see  that  the  logic  of  Mr.  Spencer 
is  identical  with  that  of  Spinoza.  Like  Spinoza, 
he  reaches  the  infinite  simply  by  wiping  out  the  lines 
of  division  between  finite  things  and  beings.  Like 
Spinoza,  he  regards  these  lines  as  due  to  our  imperfect 
ways  of  apprehending  the  reality  of  things.  The  only 
essential  difference  is  that  he  realises,  as  Spinoza  did 


V 


,Jt)Ul4^1^^^LAAyC^Jit^A^---- 


THE  IDEA  OF  THE  INFINITE.  105 

not,  the  effect  of  his  own  logic.  With  a  true  specu- 
lative intuition,  but  with  an  utter  disregard  of  his  own 
logical  principle,  Spinoza  at  once  passed  from  the  mere 
blank  of  indeterminate  being,  to  which  he  had  reduced 
everything,  to  the  idea  of  God  as  a  self-determining 
principle,  who  is  the  source  of  all  the  manifold 
determinations  of  the  universe.  Mr.  Spencer  commits 
no  such  sublime  inconsequence.  He  sees  that  the 
negation  of  all  the  determinations  of  the  finite  can 
bring  us  only  to  an  abstract  being,  of  which  nothing 
can  be  said  except  that  it  is ;  and  this  result  he 
accepts.  He  is,  therefore,  shut  up  to  the  hopeless 
conclusion  that  there  is  an  irreconcilable  opposition 
between  the  reality  of  things  and  our  thought  of  them. 
He  holds,  in  other  words,  that  that  which  alone  we 
can  recognise  as  reality  is  that  of  which  we  can  know 
nothing,  while  that  which  alone  we  can  know  is  a 
mere  product,  and  for  aught  we  can  tell  an  illusive 
product,  of  our  own  thought.  Owing  to  the  limi- 
tations of  our  minds  we  are  obliged  to  divide  and  to 
relate  that  which  is  above  all  division  and  relation ; 
for  otherwise  we  could  not  think  it  at  all.  And 
the  glimpse  we  have  of  real  being  is  only  sufficient 
to  enable  us  to  recognise  that  we  can  know  nothing ; 
for  the  idea  of  God  is  nothing  but  the  counterpart 
of  the  consciousness  of  our  own  limitations,  which 
we  can  see,  but  which  we  cannot  transcend. 

Now,  in  order  to  discover  the  defects  of  this  view, 


lOG  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RELIGION. 

it  is  necessary  to  recognise  the  element  of  truth  which 
it  contains.  It  is  true  that  the  movement  of  thought 
from  the  finite  to  the  infinite  is  regressive,  and  that 
this  regression  is  caused  hy  a  discernment  of  the 
negative  or  unreal  character  of  the  finite  existence 
from  which  we  start.  It  is  the  illusiveness,  the  un- 
certainty, the  instability  of  the  things  of  time  and 
sense  which,  in  the  first  instance  at  least,  makes  us 
look  beyond  them  to  God.  It  is  not  because  of  what 
the  finite  is,  but  mainly  because  of  what  it  isjiot,  that 
we  seek  refuge  in  the  infinite.  As  it  is  the  illusion 
of  appearance  that  awakens  scientific  inquiry  to  search 
beneath  or  beyond  it  for  that  which  is  not  to  be  found 
in  it,  so  it  is  the  failure  of  the  world  to  supply  what 
he  at  first  expected  to  get  from  it  that  drives  man 
back  upon  God.  "Thou  hast  made  us  for  Thyself," 
says  St.  Augustine,  "  and  our  souls  are  ever  restless 
till  they  rest  in  Thee."  The  necessity  of  thought  to 
rise  from  the  finite  to  the  infinite  lies  in  the  awaking 
consciousness  that  the  finite  in  itself  is  naught,  that 
neither  the  intelligence  nor  the  will  can  finally 
accept  it  as  an  absolute  reality.  The  ground  sinks 
beneath  us,  and  forces  us  to  look  for  a  more  solid 
foundation  on  which  we  may  build  our  lives,  nor  is  it 
possible  for  us  to  be  satisfied  till  we  have  found  one 
that  cannot  be  moved. 

This  being  the  case,  it  is  natural  that  the/ infinite 
which  is  reached   by  such  a  regressive  process,  should 


[\ 


THE  IDEA  OF  THE  INFINITE.  107 

in  the  first  instance  be  defined  as  that  in  which  all  the 
limits  and  imperfections  of  the  finite  are  done  away, 
and   that   the   purely  affirmative   Being,  the  supreme    ^ 
reality,  should  be  regarded  simply  as  the  negative  of 
an  existence  which  is  itself  negative  or  unreal.  I    But 
the  question  is  whether  we  can  stop  at  this  negative 
result.      If  so,  then,  as  Dr.  Erdmann  says,  the  idea  of 
the  infinite  would  be  like  the  lion's  den  in  the  fable ;  -^ 
all  the  footsteps  of  thought  would  point  inwards,  and 
none   would   be   directed   outwards.     In   other  words, 
the  ultimate  form  of  religion  would  be  a  pantheism  , 
which   dissolved    everything   in    a   God   of  whom   we 
could  say  nothing  but  that  He  or  It  is. 

Now  it  will  be  shown  in  the  sequel  that  there 
is  a  stage  of  religion  which  corresponds  to  this  de- 
scription, a  stage  in  which  God  is  viewed  simply 
as  an  abstract  unity  that  swallows  up  all  the 
differences  of  the  finite.  But  it  will  be  shown  also 
that  such  religion  is  the  product  of  an  imperfect 
reflexion,  which  fixes  in  hard  abstraction  moments 
of  thought  that  should  be  regarded  merely  as  points 
of  transition.  Tor  the  negative  movement  of  thought 
by  which  we  rise  from  the  finite  to  the  infinite  has  ( 
no  meaning  except  as  the  preparation  for  a  positive 
movement  in  which  we  contemplate  the  finite  from 
the  point  of  view  of  the  infinite.  If  we  can  go 
back  upon  the  infinite  as  the  presupposition  of  the 
finite,   this  regress   must  enable   us   to   see  the  finite 


108  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RELIGION. 

in  a  new  light.  And  this  means  that  the  infinite 
itself  must  be  conceived,  not  merely  as  that  which 
the  finite  is  not,  but  as  that  which  includes  and 
explains  it ;  not  merely  as  an  indeterminate  back- 
ground of  the  finite  but  as  a  self-determining 
principle,  which  manifests  itself  in  all  the  determina- 
tions of  the  finite  without  losing  its  unity  with  itself. 
It  must  be  so  conceived  ;  otherwise  the  negative  or 
regressive  movement  by  wliich  we  rise  to  the  infinite 
would  itself  be  impossible.  How  could  we  have  an 
idea  of  the  infinite  which  enabled  us  to  see  the 
defect  of  the  finite  without  enabling  us  to  see  anyJ- 
thing  more  ?  A  consciousness  which  apprehends  a 
limit  must  reach  beyond  it:  it  cannot  be  shut  out 
from  the  positive  knowledge  of  that  which  gives  it 
the  power  to  detect  and  look  down  upon  its  own 
finitude.  The  consciousness  of  an  impassable  limit 
set  to  our  minds  by  something  of  which  we  can 
only  say  that  it  is,  is  a  contradiction  in  terms ;  for 
it  would  involve  at  once  that  we  could,  and  that 
we  could  not  transcend  our  own  finitude.  A  merely 
finite  being,  a  being  excluded  from  all  contact  with 
the  infinite,  could  not  take  up  any  point  of  view^^ 
beyond  its  own  limits,  still  less  the  point  of  view 
of  the  infinite ;  and,  on  the  other  hand,  a  being 
who  could  raise  himself  to  such  a  point  of  view, 
still  more  a  being  whose  consciousness  of  himself 
and   other   things    was    based    upon   the   idea   of   the 


THE  IDEA   OF  THE  INFINITE.  109 

infinite  as  its  first  presupposition,  could  not  be 
excluded  from  the  positive  knowledge  of  the  infinite. 
It  appears  then  that  tliere  is  a  fundamental  in- 
coherence in  a  view  which,  though  treating  the 
infinite  as  a  positive  reality,  and,  indeed,  as  tlic 
reality  that  underlies  all  other  realities,  yet  reduces 
it  to  that  of  which  nothing  can  be  said,  except 
that  it  is.  The  first  principle  through  which  all  is 
known  cannot  itself  be  unknowable  or  unintelligible.  \ 
As  we  are  essentially  self-conscious,  that  which  is 
the  presupposition  of  all  our  life  and  thought  can-^ 
not  be  permanently  hid  from  us.  Our  very  nature 
is  to  return  upon  ourselves,  and  such  a  return  can  ^ 
only  mean  that  we  become  conscious  of  that  which 
at  first  we  presuppose.  To  say,  as  Mr.  Spencer 
says,  that  all  things  are  knowable  through  the  idea 
of  the  infinite,  but  that  the  infinite  is  itself  not 
knowable ;  to  say  that  our  consciousness  of  it  is  the 
condition  and  limit  of  all  our  other  consciousness,  but 
that  it  cannot  itself  be  determined  as  an  object,  is 
simply  to  deny  us  the  power  of  reflexion.  If  we  were 
to  adopt  such  a  principle,  we  could  not  stop  at  this 
application  of  it ;  for,  as  Socrates  showed  long  ago,  we 
always  know  the  particular  through  the  universal,  i.r. 
we  always  go  upon  certain  general  principles  in  our 
consciousness  of  particular  objects  ;  and,  if  we  could 
not  turn  the  light  of  consciousness  upon  these  general 
principles,  if  we  could  not  define  the  universals  we  use,  \ 


no  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RELIGION. 

we  could  never  come  to  know  anything.  In  truth, 
all  knowledge  of  universal  principles  involves  the 
same  difficulty,  for  the  universal  is  always  infinite 
in  relation  to  the  particulars  that  fall  under  it, 
though  it  may  be  particular  and  finite  in  rela- 
tion to  a  still  higher  universal.  To  know  is 
simply  to  carry  back  the  particular  to  the  universal, 
and  finally  to  the  highest  universal  through  which 
everything  else  is  known  ;  and  if  this  highest  univer-  , 
sal  is  itself  unknowable,  then  nothing  is  knowable. 
If,  then,  it  be  true,  as  Mr.  Spencer  tells  us,  that  the 
infinite  is  not  merely  the  negative  of  the  finite,  not  a 
mere  '  Beyond  '  to  which  we  reach  out  from  the  basis 
of  the  finite,  but  that  it  is  rather  the  basis  of  all  our 
consciousness  of  the  finite  and  even  of  ourselves,  it  is 
absurd  to  think  that  it  is  itself  beyond  the  reach  of 
knowledge.  In  saying  that  it  is  so,  Mr.  Spencer  in 
effect  admits  the  very  doctrine  he  had  seemed  to 
reject. 

But  if  this  be  so,  then  the  only  alternative  is  that 
we  should  cease  to  regard  the  infinite  after  the  manner 
of  Mr.  Spencer,  as  identical  with  the  mere  abstraction 
of  being,  and  that  we  should  begin  to  regard  it  as  a 
principle  which  is  unlimited  and  undetermined,  in  the 
sense  that  it  limits  and  determines  itself.  If  this 
seem  an  unfamiliar  notion,  it  can  only  be  because  we 
do  not  reflect  on  the  nature  of  that  regressive  process 
to    which  all   our   knowleda;e  is   due  :  for  relioion  is 


THE  IDEA  OF  THE  INFINITE.  Ill 

simply  a  higher  form  of  that  tendency  which,  in  science, 
leads  us  to  seek  the  universal  beyond  the  particular, 
the  one  beyond  the  many.  Thus  in  our  first  natural 
view  of  the  world,  we  are  apt  to  take  it  as  a  collection  of 
individual  things  and  beings,  each  of  which  is  centred 
in  itself,  or  has  only  accidental  relations  with  the  rest. 
But  science,  in  the  strict  sense  of  the  term,  does  not 
begin  till  we  realise  that  these  supposed  independent 
individuals  are  nothing  apart  from  their  relations  to 
the  other  objects  from  which  we  distinguish  them  • 
that,  therefore,  their  distinction  and  division  from 
each  other  is  relative ;  and  that,  in  order  to  see  them 
as  they  really  are,  we  must  regard  them  as  parts  of 
a  whole,  differences  in  a  unity,  particular  manifestar 
tions  of  a  general  principle,  which  is  at  once  the 
source  of  their  distinction  and  of  their  relation  to 
each  other.  Something  like  this  correction  of  our 
first  ideas  we  make  every  time  we  rise  from  un- 
intelligent perception  to  scientific  knowledge.  For 
it  is  the  main  business  of  science  to  make  things 
intelligible  through  some  general  law  or  principle 
that  determines  their  relation  to  other  things.  We 
thus  pass  from  the  denial  of  the  independent  reality 
of  the  particulars  to  the  assertion  of  the  general  prinX 
ciple  as  the  source  and  explanation  of  whatever  reality 
they  have.  But  this  does  not  mean  that  in  any 
case  we  absolutely  lose  the  particular  in  the  universal. 
For  the  same  law  or  principle  which  is  fatal  to  the 


112  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RELIGION. 

independent  existence  of  the  particular  object,  also 
assigns  to  it  its  special  place  and  function  in  the 
whole  to  which  it  belongs.  And  it  could  not  do 
the  former  without  also  doing  the  latter. 

To  apply  this  to  the  case  in  point.  The  religious 
like  the  scientific  consciousness  seeks  to  find  the 
reason  or  principle  of  the  particular  in  the  universal ; 
and  it  differs  from  science  mainly  in  this,  that  it 
cannot  rest  except  in  the  infinite  unity  which  under- 
lies all  the  differences  of  the  finite.  It  involves, 
therefore,  to  begin  with,  a  perception  of  tlie  relative 
and  limited  character  of  all  finite  things  and  beings. 
It  makes  us  retract  our  first  belief  in  the  things 
of  the  world  as  stable  and  permanent  existences, 
which  need  to  be  referred  to  no  cause  or  principle 
but  themselves.  It  thus  forces  us,  in  a  sense,  to 
'see  all  things  in  God,'  or  to  regard  nothing  as  having 
any  reality  apart  from  Him.  But  it  does  not  force 
us  to  regard  God  as  a  mere  abyss  of  being,  which 
has  no  individuality  in  itself,  and  which,  therefore, 
is  fatal  to  the  individuality  of  all  other  existences. 
On  the  contrary,  in  its  ultimate  form,  it  leads  us 
to  regard  Him  as  a  principle  of  life  and  intelligence 
through  whom  all  things  are  and  are  known,  who 
is  continually  realising  Himself  in  all  the  infinite 
difference  of  the  natural  and  the  spiritual  worlds, 
and  in  whom  all  natural  and  spiritual  beings  find 
their  end.     Hence  the  final  form  of  religion  is  not, 


THE  IDEA  OF  THE  INFINITE.  113 

as  Mr.  Spencer's  principles  would  compel  us  to  think,, 
a  quietism  which  despairs  of  all  finite  interests,  and 
dissolves  them  and  itself  in  the  absolute.  It  is  a 
faith  which  loses  all  things  in  God  to  find  them 
again  transformed,  a  faith  which  rises  above  the 
immediate  disappointments  of  finite  existence,  and 
rekindles  the  love  of  life  on  the  altar  on  which  it 
is  consecrated  to  God.  If  its  first  word  is  that  the 
things  of  time  and  sense  are  naught  in  themselves, 
its  last  word  is  that  in  God — as  elements  in  the 
manifestation  or  realisation  of  the  ultimate  principle 
of  reality — they  have  a  reality  and  an  import  which 
can  never  be   exhausted. 


VOL.  I.  H 


LECTUEE    FIFTH. 

MR.    spencer's    DUALISTIC   VIEW    OF    THE    CONSCIOUSNESS 
OF    THE   FINITE. 

Summary  of  the  Views  of  Prof.  Max  Midler  and  Mr.  Spencer  as 
to  the  Infinite— Mr.  Spencer's  View  as  to  the  Two  Forms  of  our 
Consciousness  of  the  Finite — That  he  makes  Inner  and  Outer 
Experience  the  So2irQgs  of  Two  Opposite  Philosophies— That 
they  are  really  Tivo  Factors  in  One  Experience — That,  though 
Opposed,  they  are  necessarily  Related — That  to  Separate  them  is 
to  make  them  Both  Meaningless — Consequences  of  this  as  regards 
their  Relation  to  the  Consciousness  of  the  Infinite — Sense  in 
which  we  '  See  All  Things  in  God ' — Sense  in  which  God  is 
Unknowable. 

In  the  last  lecture  I  endeavoured  to  throw  some 
light  on  the  idea  of  religion  by  considering  two 
views  of  it  which,  though  not  far  removed  from 
each  other,  yet  are  in  one  aspect  contrasted  and 
opposed.  The  view  of  Professor  Max  Miiller  is 
that  the  infinite,  which  is  the  object  of  religion,  is 
to  be  taken  as  jDrimarily  the  negative  of  the  finite, 
as  a  '  Beyond '  to  which  we  reach  out  from  the 
firm  ground  of  the  finite,  but  which  we  cannot  de- 
fine in  itself.      To   this   conception   a  twofold  objec- 


DUALISTIC  VIEW  OF  CONSCIOUSNESS.     115 

tion  has  been  taken.  In  the  first  place,  if  this  defi- 
nition be  meant  to  express  that  which  is  common  to 
all  religions,  it  is  obvious  that,  as  Professor  Max  Miiller 
allows,  there  are  many  religions  which  do  not  rise  to 
the  explicit  consciousness  of  this  idea  of  the  infinite, 
and  which  he  can  bring  under  this  idea  only  on  the 
ground  that  the  object  worshipped  is  one  which 
cannot  be  fully  grasped  and  measured  by  the  senses, 
an  object,  therefore,  in  which  the  idea  of  the  in- 
finite may  be  supposed  to  be  implicitly  present.  In 
other  words,  he  justifies  the  assertion  that  the  idea 
of  the  infinite  is  essential  to  religion  by  attempting 
to  show  that  it  is  latent  in  religion  from  the  first, 
and  that  as  religion  develops,  it  necessarily  becomes 
explicit.  In  the  second  place,  the  idea  of  the  in- 
finite as  a  '  Beyond '  or  negation  of  the  finite  is 
itself  an  imperfect  idea,  which  does  not  explain  it- 
self, and  which  can  be  explained  only  as  a  step 
toward  the  evolution  of  a  higher  idea.  .But  if  in 
defining  religion  we  are  to  speak  of  what  is  im- 
plicitly contained  in  religion,  we  must  follow  it  to 
the  highest  form  which  alone  reveals  all  that  is  so 
contained  in  it  ;  for,  as  I  showed  in  a  former  lec- 
ture, it  is  only  the  last  stage  in  a  development  which 
clearly  tells  us  all  that  was  contained  in  the  first.  Now 
the  consciousness  of  the  infinite  as  a  mere  '  Beyond ' 
would  be  impossible,  if  it  were  not  based  on  a 
deeper   thought,  the   thought  of  the   infinite  as   pre- 


y 


1 1 G  THE  K VOLUTION  OF  RELIGION. 

sent  to  us  with  and  in  the  finite.  We  could  not 
be  conscious  of  our  own  finitude,  if  we  were  alto- 
gether finite.  We  could  not  even  strive  after  the 
infinite,  if  we  did  not,  in  some  sense,  take  our  stand 
upon  it  in  determining  our  own  limits. 

Hence  Mr.  Spencer  seems  to  present  us  with  a 
more  adequate  view  of  the  subject  when  he  speaks 
of  the  infinite  and  unconditioned  not  as  the  negative 
of  the  finite  but  as  the  'prcswpiwdtion  of  our  con- 
sciousness of  the  finite,  the  positive  basis  of  our 
thought  of  it.  As  we  know  by  distinguishing  and  re- 
lating, i.e.  by  a  process  which  involves  negation,  so, 
he  argues,  we  always  go  upon  the  assumption  of  a 
primary  affirmation,  an  absolute  reality  of  which  all 
finite  things  must  be  conceived  as  parts  or  elements. 
And  the  one  reason  why  our  thought  reaches  'beyond 
the  finite  is  that  the  infinite  is  presupposed  in  "\ 
it.  From  this  point  of  view  we  might  expect  him 
to  adopt  an  idea  of  God  similar  to  that  suggested 
in  our  second  lecture,  the  idea  of  an  infinite  being 
who  is  the  unity  of  all  differences,  and  especially 
of  the  ultimate  difference  of  subject  and  object. 
And,  up  to  a  certain  point,  he  seems  to  be  on 
the  way  to  realise  this  expectation.  For  he  treats 
Ae  infinite  as  that  which  is  beyond  all  differences  ; 
and  he  brings  this  conception  into  special  relation 
with  the  difference  of  matter  and  mind,  which  he 
regards    as   including    under  it  all    other    differences 


DUALISTIC  VIEW  OF  CONSCIOUSNESS.     117 

But  when  we  ask  how  he  conceives  this  infinite, 
we  find  that,  though  he  declares  it  to  be  the  pre- 
supposition of  all  our  knowledge,  he  does  not  con- 
ceive it  as  the  unity  which  is  the  source  and  limit 
of  all  difference,  but  only,  so  to  speak,  as  the  empty 
continuity  of  a  background,  on  which  loe,  draw  lines 
of  division.  Accepting  the  principle  of  Spinoza — that 
all  our  determination  of  things  involves  the  intro- 
duction of  an  element  of  negation  into  the  pure 
affirmative  being  of  the  infinite — he  finds  aljsolute 
reality  only  in  the  indeterminate,  in  the  aireipov  of 
Greek  philosophy,  which  neither  determines  itself,  nor 
is  affected  by  any  determination  it  receives  from  our 
intelligence.  Hence  the  idea  of  the  infinite  is  said 
to  be  a  "  consciousness "  which  is  not  knowledge,  a 
consciousness  which,  though  it  is  the  'priiis  of 
everything,  explains  nothing.  Thus,  although  the 
infinite  is  the  presupposition  of  all  our  thought,  it  is 
not  a  principle  by  which  we  can  explain  any  of  the 
differences  that  come  into  our  consciousness,  even 
the  primary  difference  of  subject  and  object,  or  of 
inner  and  outer  experience.  It  cannot  throw  any 
light  upon  the  relation  of  the  mind  to  its  object. 
It  cannot  tell  us  why  we  distinguish  the  one  from 
the  other  or  oppose  the  one  to  the  other ;  nor  can 
it  help  us  to  reconcile  their  division  or  bring  them 
into  harmony  with  each  other.  The  consequence 
is  that  the  object  and  the   self  fall  apart  from   each 


V 


US  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RELIGION. 

other  in  a  disunion  which  admits  of  no  reconcilia- 
tion. Mr.  Spencer's  theory  thus  combines  the  diffi- 
culties of  Pantheism  and  Dualism.  It  is  a  Dualism, 
because  it  asserts  that  there  is  an  absolute  breach 
between  the  two  modes  of  the  infinite,  which  it 
leaves  without  any  possibility  of  mediation.  And 
it  is  an  abstract  Pantheism,  because  it  conceives  the 
infinite,  to  which  it  ultimately  refers  everything,  not 
as  a  principle  which  explains  or  reconciles  the 
differences  of  these  modes,  but  simply  as  a  gulf  in 
which  they  are  all  finally  submerged  and  lost. 
When  we  take  matter  and  mind  in  themselves, 
they  are  absolutely  divided  ;  when  we  bring  them 
in  relation  to  the  infinite  which  is  their  presupposi- 
tion, they  both  alike  disappear  and  dissolve  them- 
selves into  it. 

Now  this  way  of  thinking  is  not  peculiar  to  ]\Ir. 
Herbert  Spencer.  On  the  contrary,  it  is  a  way  of 
thinking  which  has  prevailed,  in  a  form  more  or 
less  akin  to  that  in  which  it  appears  in  him,  ever 
since  the  dawn  of  modern  philosophy.  We  find  it 
already  suggested  by  Descartes,  and  worked  out  to 
its  logical  result  by  Spinoza,  who  held  that  thought 
and  extension — or,  as  we  might  put  it,  mind  and 
matter — are  two  parallel  but  unrelated  attributes 
under  which  the  infinite  substance  manifests  itself. 
And  it  has  been  accepted  from  Mr.  Spencer  by 
Professor    Huxley   and    Dr.    Tyndall.       It    may   thus 


DUALISriC  VIEW  OF  CONSCIOUSNESS.      119 

be  regarded  as  the  accepted  creed  of  modem  Ag- 
nosticism ;  and  it  is  therefore  needful  to  subject  it  to 
a  careful  examination. 

Now  we  have  already  discussed  Mr.  Spencer's 
statements  as  to  the  unknowableness  of  the  infinite 
in  itself;  and  it  remains  for  us  to  consider 
what  he  says  of  the  two  opposite  phenomenal 
modes  in  which  it  expresses  itself.  When  we  go 
beyond  the  infinite,  which  is  the  presupposition  of 
all  consciousness,  there  are,  he  declares,  two  different 
ways  of  looking  at  the  world,  each  complete  in  itself. 
We  may  regard  it  either  as  a  material  or  as  an  ideal 
process,  either  as  a  series  of  causally  linked  states  of 
matter  or  as  a  series  of  causally  linked  states  of  mind, 
according  as  we  consider  the  objects  of  our  con- 
sciousness as  external  objects,  or  the  ideas  through 
which  such  objects  are  presented  to  us.  And  each 
of  these  ways  of  representing  the  world-process  would 
naturally  lead,  if  it  were  taken  by  itself,  to  a  special 
philosophical  theory — the  former  to  a  materialistic, 
and  the  latter  to  an  idealistic  theory  of  the  world. 
"  Follow  the  teaching  of  the  one,"  says  Mr.  Spencer, 
"  and  you  are  forced  to  admit  that  matter  is  a 
mode  of  mind ;  accept  the  results  of  the  other,  and 
you  cannot  deny  the  inference  that  mind  is  a  mode 
of  matter."  When  we  look  outwards,  we  become  for 
the  nonce  Materialists :  for  all  that  is  outwardly 
presented    to   us   is   matter    and   motion ;    and,  if  we 


120  THE  EVOLUTION  OE  RELIGION. 

follow  up  this  mode  of  cousciousuess,  we  ultimately 
reduce  the  world  to  the  continuous  product  of  the 
action  and  reaction  of  moving  atoms  or  molecules, 
which  variously  attract  or  repel  each  other.  On 
the  other  hand,  if  we  change  our  point  of  view  and 
look  inwards,  we  become  for  the  nonce  Idealists, 
and  regard  the  external  world  and  all  that  is 
in  it  as  consisting  in  feelings  and  their  com- 
plex relations  ;  for  it  is  through  these  alone 
that  the  external  world  is  presented  to  us.  These 
alone  are  the  immediate  objects  of  consciousness, 
and  it  is  their  association,  according  to  certain 
general  laws,  that  gives  rise  to  all  the  knowledge 
that  we  possess.  Explanation  under  this  mode  of 
consciousness  only  consists  in  showing  how  primitive 
shocks  of  feeling  may  become  associated  together  so 
as  to  give  rise  to  a  coherent  consciousness  of  things. 
Each  of  these  forms  of  consciousness  has  thus  a 
primitive  element  to  which  we  may  reduce  every- 
thing, but  these  primitive  elements  have  no  assign- 
able relation  to  each  other.  We  cannot  pass  over 
the  gulf  between  them,  or  translate  the  language  of 
the  one  mode  into  that  of  the  other.  "  When  the 
two  modes  of  being  which  we  distinguish  as  sub- 
jective and  objective  have  been  severally  reduced  to 
the  lowest  terms,  any  further  comprehension  must 
be  an  assimilation  of  these  lowest  terms  to  one 
another ;  and,  as  we  have  already  seen,  this  assimila- 


DUALISTIC  VIEW  OF  CONSCIOUSNESS.     121 

tion  is  negated  by  the  very  distinction  of  subject 
and  object,  which  is  itself  the  consciousness  of  a 
difference  transcending  all  other  differences.  So  far 
from  helping  us  to  think  of  them  as  of  one  kind, 
analysis  only  serves  to  render  more  manifest  the 
impossibility  of  finding  for  them  a  common  concept, 
a  thought  under  which  they  can  be  united "... 
for  "  that  a  unit  of  feeling  has  nothing  in  common 
with  a  unit  of  motion  becomes  more  than  ever 
manifest  when  we  bring  the  two  into  juxtaposi- 
tion." ^  Hence  we  have  two  principles  of  explana- 
tion, to  either  of  which  we  can  reduce  the  whole  of 
things.  We  can  take  for  granted  mind,  or  rather 
feelino's  as  the  ultimate  units  of  which  mind  is 
made  up,  and  on  this  basis  we  can  work  out  a 
complete  idealistic  system,  explaining  matter  simply 
as  objectified  feelings  ;  or  we  can  take  for  granted 
matter  or  its  atomic  constituents,  and  on  this  basis 
we  can  work  out  a  complete  materialistic  system, 
explaining  life  and  mind  as  modes  of  motion.  But 
finally  we  find  ourselves  balanced  between  these 
two  opposite  principles  and  systems,  without  hope  of 
finding  our  way  from  the  one  to  the  other.  The 
unity  is  found  only  in  that  unknowable  of  which, 
though  we  cannot  know  it,  we  still  are  conscious, 
as  the  absolute  reality  of  which  both  subject  and 
object  may  be  regarded  as  modes.  In  other  words,  we 
^Principles  of  Pswholocf?/,  I.  158,  §  61. 


122  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RELIGION. 

are  suspended  between  two  finite  forms  of  thought, 
and  can  regard  the  infinite  only  as  the  absolute  reality 
which  is  determined  and  limited  in  both,  but  of  which 
in  itself  we  can  say  nothing  except  that  it  is.  "  See 
then  our  predicament,"  says  Mr.  Spencer,  "  we  can  ex- 
plain matter  only  in  terms  of  mind  ;  we  can  think  of 
mind  only  in  terms  of  matter.  When  we  have  pushed 
our  explanation  of  the  first  to  the  furthest  limit,  we 
are  referred  to  the  second  for  a  final  answer ;  and, 
when  we  have  got  the  final  answer  to  the  second,  we 
are  referred  back  to  the  first."  ^ 

We  may  then  sum  u])  the  whole  matter  thus. 
According  to  Mr.  Spencer,  we  have  and  can  have  no 
knowledge  of  the  ultimate  unity  beyond  all  difference 
except  as  '  Being '  in  the  abstract,  infinite  Being,  or, 
what  is  the  same  thing  for  Mr.  Spencer,  Being  without 
any  determination.  We  cannot  grasp  it  as  a  pro- 
ductive principle  which  explains  difference  and  at  the 
same  time  overcomes  it.  It  is  the  dark  in  which  all 
colours  become  grey.  When  we  reach  this  unity,  it 
only  remains  for  us  to  lose  ourselves  in  it  ;  for  the 
ascent  to  it  is  by  the  way  of  pure  abstraction,  and 
pure  abstraction  as  it  ascends  draws  the  ladder  after 
it.  When  we  proceed  merely  by  omitting  elements, 
what  is  left  does  not  afford  any  clue  to  what  is 
omitted.  So  conceived,  the  idea  of  the  infinite  has  no 
dialectic  in  it  to  bring  us  back  to  the  finite  ;  in  other 
^Principles  of  Psychology,  I.  627,  §  272. 


DUALISTIC  VIEW  OF  CONSCIOUSNESS.      123 

words,  it  has  nothing  in  it  which  could  be  supposed  to 
give  origin  to  the  finite  or  which  could  be  used  to 
explain  it.  If,  therefore,  we  return  to  the  finite  at  all, 
it  must  be  by  a  leap  from  unity  to  difference,  by  an 
arbitrary  restoration  of  the  forms  of  the  finite  which 
we  had  rejected  in  our  upward  path.  And  these 
forms  will  remain  for  us  just  the  same  as  if  we  had 
never  gone  beyond  them  at  all.  We  have  thus  risen 
for  a  moment  above  our  ordinary  consciousness  of  the 
finite  world  and  our  finite  selves,  but  we  have  brought 
back  no  light  which  can  make  that  consciousness  more 
intelligible.  We  have,  as  it  were,  ascended  into 
heaven,  but  have  stolen  from  it  no  l*romethean  spark 
to  kindle  a  fire  upon  earth.  For  the  only  result  is  to 
leave  our  "  two  consciousnesses,"  to  use  the  strange 
expression  of  Mr.  Spencer,  in  such  complete  discord  with 
each  other  that  they  become  the  parents  of  two  rival 
philosophies;  and  these  two  philosophies  must  continue 
their  internecine  war  without  end  so  long  as  human 
life  lasts,  or  till  its  antinomies  and  inconsistencies  are 
lost  in  the  unknowable  infinite  from  which  for  a  season 
they  have  emerged. 

Now  I  wish  again,  before  criticising  this  view,  to 
call  attention  to  the  elements  of  truth  in  it.  In  the  first 
place,  Mr,  Spencer  seems  to  me  to  be  right  in  regard- 
ing the  idea  of  God  or  of  the  infinite  as  the  primary 
presupposition  of  all  our  knowledge.  I  agree  with 
him  also  in  thinking  that  the  idea  of  the  infinite  is  the 


124  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RELIGION. 

source  out  of  which  all  religion  springs,  and  that  the 
clear  consciousness  of  it  is  the  last  result  of  the  de- 
velopment of  religion.  For  the  highest  religion  must 
be  that  in  which  tlie  principle  of  all  religion  comes  to 
self-consciousness.  Further,  I  accept  Mr.  Spencer's  view, 
in  so  far  as  he  regards  the  final  difference  of  the  finite, 
beyondwhich  lies  only  the  infinite,  as  being  the  difference 
of  subject  and  object,  of  inner  and  outer  experience.^ 
These  are,  as  it  were,  the  pillars  of  Hercules,  between 
which  the  current  of  our  life  flows,  and  beyond  them 
lies  only  the  ocean.  Nay,  I  am  ready  to  admit  that, 
if  we  can  find  no  connexion  between  these  two  factors, 
no  unity  that  transcends  the  division  between  the 
consciousness  of  self  and  that  of  the  not-self,  then  our 
intelligence  must  be  fundamentally  incoherent,  and 
unable  to  answer  the  questions  which  it  itself  suggests. 
Thus  knowledge  will  be  for  ever  vexed  with  an 
opposition  which  cannot  be  overcome,  because  it  is  an 
opposition  between  tioo  first  imncqilcs,  each  of  which, 
from  its  own  point  of  view,  dominates  the  whole  world. 
For,  though  there  is  a  principle  which  is  above  both,  it 
cannot,  if  this  be  the  true  conception  of  it,  be  used  to 
bridge  over  the  gulf,  but  only  makes  us  conscious  of 
its  depth  and  darkness. 

To  this  view,  however,  there  is,  at  the  outset,  an 
obvious  empirical  objection.  If  it  were  true,  con- 
sciousness would  always  need  to  alternate  between  its 
two  modes,  between  inner  and  outer  experience,  and 


DU A  LI  STIC  VIEW  OF  CONSCIOUSNESS.     125 

it  could  never  bring  them  together,  except  in  an 
idea  of  the  infinite  which  leaves  out  all  that  dis- 
tinguishes either  mode.  Mr.  Spencer  forgets  that  this 
impossible  feat  of  combining  the  consciousness  of  the 
self  with  that  of  the  not-self,  is  performed  by  us 
every  day  and  in  almost  every  act  of  thought  ;  for  we 
are  constantly  putting  our  inner  experience  in  relation 
to  outer  experience,  and  our  outer  experience  in  relation  ^ 
to  inner  experience.  The  consciousness  of  our  own 
feelings  or  ideas  and  the  consciousness  of  objects  are 
not  "  two  consciousnesses"  but  rather  they  are  two 
elements  of  one  consciousness,  which  are  always 
present  together.  Our  whole  intellectual  life  is  a 
continual  return  upon  ourselves  from  the  outward 
world ;  our  whole  practical  life  is  a  continual  effort  after 
the  realisation  of  ourselves  in  the  outward  world.  A 
theory  that  divorces  tliese  two  elements  from  each  other, 
and  maintains  that  there  is  nothing  to  unite  them  but 
the  abstraction  of  Being,  is  at  variance  with  obvious 
facts  of  experience  ;  for  experience  teaches  us  that  the 
inner  and  outer  life  are  two  things  which  are  never 
found  separated,  two  things  which  we  may  distinguish, 
but  which  are  never  actually  disjoined  from  each  other. 
Hence  it  is  absurd  to  say  that  it  is  impossible  to  unite 
or  to  relate,  what  we  are  always  uniting  and  relating ; 
or  to  speak  of  two  separate  'consciousnesses,'  when  what 
we  have  is  only  one  consciousness,  though  with  more 
than  one  element  included  in  it.     Those  who  talk  of 


126  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RELIGION. 

an  impassable  gulf  between  the  inner  and  the  outer 
world  may  fairly  be  asked  to  produce  one  of  them 
without  the  other.  And  if  any  theory  makes  it  neces-  '. 
sary  to  separate  them,  we  shall  surely  say,  '  so  much 
the  worse  for  the  theory,'  and  not  '  so  much  the  worse 
for  the  facts.' 

But,  further,  not  only  may  we  thus  meet  Mr. 
Spencer  by  an  appeal  to  the  facts,  but  also  we  can  see 
quite  clearly  the  reason  why  the  facts  are  so.  We 
can  see,  in  other  words,  not  merely  that  the  inner  and 
the  outer  world  are  not  disjoined  in  experience,  but 
we  can  see  that  it  is  impossible  in  the  nature  of  things 
that  they  should  be  so  disjoined,  and  even  that  there 
is  a  contradiction  in  the  very  idea  of  their  separation. 
In  fact,  if  we  try  in  thought  to  carry  out  a  thorough- 
going separation  of  the  inner  and  the  outer  world,  we 
empty  them  both  of  all  their  contents,  these  contents 
lying  just  in  their  relations.  When  Mr.  Spencer 
speaks  of  two  independent  '  consciousnesses,'  one  of 
which  oives  rise  to  a  consistent  materialism  and 
the  other  to  a  consistent  idealism,  it  may  fairly  be 
answered  that  both  of  these  theories — as  Mr. 
Spencer  states  them- — are  the  results  of  a  false 
abstraction,  by  which  elements  of  consciousness,  only 
to  be  known  in  their  correlation,  are  torn  asunder, 
and  set  up  as  independent  realities,  each  complete 
in  itself  without  the  other.  Let  me  show  this  by 
considering  very  shortly  what  is  the  general  meaning 


DU A  LI  STIC  VIEW  OF  CONSCIOUSNESS.      127 

and   purport   of  each    of  these  supj)o.sed  rival  philo- 
sophies. 

In  the  first  place,  what  is  MaUrialimi,  as  Mr. 
Spencer  understands  it  \  It  is  a  theory,  we  must 
answer,  which  takes  the  world  purely  as  an  external 
world  wherein  everything  is  explained  by  matter  and 
motion.  It  is  a  theory  which  looks  upon  the  olijects 
of  the  external  world — which  we  know  only  through 
perception  and  thought  and  in  relation  to  the  subject 
within  us — as  if  they  existed  in  themselves  altogether 
apart  from  relation  not  merely  to  us  l)at  to  any 
such  subject.  Now  it  would  take  us  too  far  to  enter 
into  the  complete  proof  that  such  a  view  is  baseless 
and  inconsistent  with  itself.  But  it  is  scarcely 
necessary  to  call  up  the  ghost  of  Kant,  or  even  of 
Berkeley,  to  show  that  the  idea  of  an  intelligible 
world  without  any  relation  to  an  intelligence,  leads, 
if  it  is  carried  out  to  its  logical  results,  to 
absurdity  and  self-contradiction.  It  must,  of  course, 
be  admitted  that  in  our  ordinary  consciousness  of  the 
world,  we  do  not  take  note  of  the  fact  that  an  object 
implies  a  subject.  Indeed,  it  requires  a  distinct  eftbrt 
of  reflexion  to  realise  that  it  does  ;  for,  at  first,  we  are 
so  much  occupied  with  the  object  we  are  contemplating 
that  we  do  not  turn  our  attention  to  the  self  for 
which  it  is.  But  our  forgetfulness  or  want  of  reflexion 
cannot  alter  the  fact — that  knower  and  known  are 
essentially   correlative,  and  that  neither  of  them   can 


128  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RELIGION. 

be  conceived  to  exist  without  the  other.  Divest 
the  world  of  all  its  relations  to  a  subject,  and  it 
sinks  into  a  "  thing  in  itself,"  a  cafput  mortimm  of 
abstraction,  of  which  nothing  can  be  said.  It  ceases 
to  have  either  primary  or  secondary  qualities,  to  be 
coloured  or  extended  or  solid,  or  to  have  any  one  of 
the  characteristics  by  which  we  determine  it  as 
material :  for  all  these  imply  relations  to  a  percipient 
or  thinking  subject.  Even  the  assertion  that  it  exists 
has  no  right  to  be  called  Materialism  any  more  than 
Idealism.  For  thus  viewed  apart  from  all  its  relations 
to  the  subject,  it  is  nothing  but  the  same  indetermined 
being  which  Mr.  Spencer  calls  the  Absolute.  Thus 
Materialism,  like  every  partial  truth  when  treated  as 
the  whole  truth,  commits  suicide.  The  object  setting 
up  for  itself  apart  from  the  subject,  ceases  to  be  even 
an  object. 

Nor  is  it  otherwise  with  what  Mr.  Spencer  calls 
Idealism,  the  doctrine  that  all  objects  are  reducible  to 
feelings  or  ideas,  states  or  data  of  a  subjective  conscious- 
ness. Our  inner  life  is  nothing  but  our  return  upon 
ourselves  from  the  outer  life,  and  the  consequent  reaction 
of  the  self  within  upon  the  world  without.  I  admit, 
of  course,  that  when  we  do  thus  return  upon  ourselves, 
or  direct  our  thought  to  the  subject  that  thinks,  we 
are  apt  to  oppose  ourselves,  our  own  feelings  and  ideas, 
to  the  objects  and  facts  that  excite  them.  At  such 
times  we  are  intensely  conscious  of  the  self  as  distinct 


DUALISTIC  VIEW  OF  CONSCIOUSNESS.     129 

from  the  objective  world,  and  not  seldom  we  exag- 
gerate this  distinction  into  a  contradiction.  The  lone- 
liness and  isolation  from  which  the  individual  spirit 
cannot  escape — the  ring,  as  it  were,  of  adamant  that  is 
about  each  one  of  us,  preventing  us  from  coming  into 
union  with  any  even  the  nearest  brother  soul — is  a 
frequent  theme  of  poets  and  moralists.  In  each 
individual  there  is  a  special  stream  of  tendency,  a 
particularity  of  interest,  which  he  cannot  entirely 
communicate  to  any  one  else.  "  The  heart  knoweth 
its  own  bitterness,  and  a  stranger  doth  not  intermeddle 
with  its  joy."  This  sense  of  isolation  is  often  vividly 
expressed  by  Matthew  Arnold,  and  may  be  said  to  be 
one  of  the  main  themes  of  his  poetry : — ■ 

"  Yes,  in  the  sea  of  life  inisled 

With  echoing  straits  between  us  thrown, 
Dotting  the  shoreless  watery  wild, 
We  mortal  millions  live  alone. 

Around  us  spreads  the  watery  plain, 
Oh,  might  our  margins  meet  again  ! 

"  Who  ordered  that  this  longing's  fire 
Should  be,  as  soon  as  kindled,  cooled  ? 
Who  renders  vain  this  deep  desire  ? 

A  God,  a  God  their  severance  ruled, 
And  bade  between  their  shores  to  be 
The  unplumb.'d,  salt,  estranging  sea." 

Even  in  regard  to  the  realm  of  thought  and  knowledge 
many  writers  are  fond  of  dwelling  upon  the  idea  that 
each  of  us  lives  in  a  little  world  of  his  own,  in  which 

VOL.  I.  I 


130  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RELIGION. 

things  are  arranged  in  a  way  not  quite  identical  with 
the  mental  cosmos  of  any  other  individual.  And  one 
of  the  two  great  individualistic  schools  of  morals — 
that  to  which  the  Stoics  belong — is  constantly  insisting 
on  the  lesson  that  the  isolated  self-determination  of 
the  individual  is  that  in  which  alone  he  shows  his 
character  as  a  moral  being ;  while  the  opposite  school 
holds  that  his  only  possible  aim  is  to  seek  his  own 
pleasure  and  avoid  his  own  pain.  Such  exaggerations 
of  the  subjective  aspect  of  our  consciousness  have  their 
value,  and  even  their  necessity,  at  particular  stages  in 
the  life  of  the  individual  or  the  race.  But  they 
contain  only  one  side  of  the  truth,  and  if  they  tempt 
us  to  obliterate  the  other  side,  and  to  entrench  our- 
selves in  a  theory  of  subjective  idealism  (such  as  is 
commonly  attributed  to  Berkeley),  they  become  self- 
contradictory  and  contain  their  own  refutation.  The 
consciousness  of  self,  it  must  be  again  pointed  out,  is 
always  primarily  and  immediately  a  return  upon  self 
from  objects ;  and  though  this  return  involves  a  kind 
of  opposition  between  the  self  and  that  from  which 
the  return  is  made  upon  it,  yet  it  should  be  remem- 
bered that  a  negative  relation  is  still  a  relation,  and, 
in  this  case  at  least,  a  necessary  relation.  If  there  is 
no  consciousness  of  the  object  except  in  relation  to  the 
subject,  as  little  is  there  a  consciousness  of  the  subject 
which  is  not  mediated  by  a  consciousness  of  the 
object. 


DUALISTIC  VIEW  OF  CONSCIOUSNESS.     131 

And  if  it  be  said  that,  in  the  practical  life,  self- 
consciousness  goes  beyond  the  objective  consciousness 
und  reacts  upon  it,  yet  this  does  not  permit  us  to 
treat  the  inner  life  in  this  sphere  as  forming  a  whole 
in  itself,  extraneous  to  and  independent  of  the  outer 
life.  For  if,  in  action,  we  go  beyond  what  is  already 
contained  in  our  consciousness  of  the  objective  world, 
yet,  in  the  first  place,  we  could  not  have  gone  beyond 
it  except  by  means  of  it ;  and,  in  the  second  place, 
we  go  beyond  it  only  as  we  set  up  for  ourselves  a  new 
end  to  be  realised  in  it.  It  is  thus  the  presupposition 
from  which  we  start,  and  it  determines  the  form  of 
every  end  which  we  can  seek  to  realise.  Hence  the 
idea  of  a  pure  consciousness  of  self,  shut  up  in  itself 
without  any  knowledge  of  objects,  is  the  abstraction 
of  one  element  in  our  life,  which,  in  losing  all  relation 
to  the  other  elements,  loses  all  its  own  meaning.  And 
the  same  is  true  of  a  pure  self-determination  such 
as  some  moralists  have  imagined,  i.e.  a  determination 
of  the  self  without  any  relation  to  objects,  or  which 
is  not  at  the  same  time  the  determination  of  some- 
thing other  than  the  self.  The  moral  law  has  no 
meaning,  it  is  absolutely  emptied  of  all  its  contents, 
if  we  take  out  of  it  all  relations  to  the  world  and 
especially  to  the  social  environment  in  which  the 
individual  stands.  The  conception  of  the  individual 
subject  as  at  any  time  alone  with  himself,  conscious 
of  nothing  but  his  own   states,  and   seeking  nothing 


132  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RELIGION. 

but  his  own  pleasures — or,  at  best,  seeking  only  the 
realisation  of  a  purely  subjective  law — is  a  fiction 
which,  logically,  is  as  fatal  to  self-consciousness  as 
it  is  to  the  consciousness  of  the  objective  world.  The 
Berkeleian  Idealism — if  this  view  of  the  pure  subjec- 
tivity of  consciousness  is  to  be  attributed  to  Berkeley 
— rests  on  a  confusion  between  the  truth,  that  all 
objects  are  objects  for  a  subject,  and  the  error  that 
the  only  possible  objects,  or  at  least  direct  objects, 
for  such  a  subject  are  its  own  states.  The  truth 
is  that  we  are  conscious  of  our  own  states  as  such 
only  in  distinction  from,  and  in  relation  to,  the 
objects  to  which  we  refer  them ;  but  neither  these 
states  nor  anything  else  can  be  known  except  in 
relation  to  a  subject.  And  the  same  is  true  on  the 
practical  side.  We  cannot  find  ends  for  our  action 
in  our  own  feelings  apart  from  objects ;  nor  can 
we  determine  ourselves  with  a  view  to  our  own 
pleasure  without  reference  to  any  objective  end  in 
which  pleasure  is  found.  We  must  seek  our  pleasure 
in  something,  and  joy  or  sorrow  can  come  to  us  only 
through  the  attainment  or  the  failure  of  ends,  which 
are  other  than  the  joy  or  sorrow  itself.  For  good 
or  ill  we  are  bound  to  the  universe,  so  that  we  can 
neither  know  our  own  nature,  nor  seek  our  own  good, 
apart  from  it.  And  a  theory  which  speaks  of  inner 
experience  as  one  thing  and  outer  experience  as  another 
and  totally  different  thing,  might  as  well,  to  employ  a 


DUALISTIC  VIEW  OF  CONSCIOUSNESS.      133 

homely  illustration  which  Professor  Terrier  was  fond 
of  using,  speak  of  a  stick  with  one  end  only.  It  is 
as  absurd  in  the  realm  of  spirit  as  in  the  realm  of 
matter  to  suppose  that  we  can  have  an  inside  without 
an  outside,  or  an  outside  without  an  inside. 

But  if  this  be  true,  it  leads  us  directly  to  the  re- 
futation of  another  part  of  the  theory  of  Mr.  Spencer. 
If  the  consciousness  of  the  self  is  essentially  related  to 
the  consciousness  of  the  not-self,  and  cannot  by  any 
possibility  be  disjoined  from  it,  it  follows  that  the 
consciousness  of  the  unity,  which  is  beyond  the  oppo- 
sition of  self  and  not-self,  need  not  remain  an  empty 
and  otiose  abstraction,  to  which  no  further  determina- 
tion can  be  given  than  that  it  is.  It  would  be  truer 
to  say  that  our  consciousness  of  objects  and  our  con- 
sciousness of  the  self,  when  we  take  them  in  their 
isolation  from  the  unity,  involve  such  an  abstraction ; 
and  that,  therefore,  we  cannot  see  either  in  its  truth, 
until  we  see  them  both  as  embraced  in  or  derived 
from  it.  Mr.  Spencer  tells  us  that,  when  we  lift  our 
thoughts  to  the  infinite,  we  leave  behind  us  all  that 
characterises  either  the  subject  or  the  object,  so  that 
nothing  remains  but  the  vague  thought  of  indeter- 
minate being,  which  may  be  said  to  include  every- 
thing, only  because  it  excludes  nothing.  In  like 
manner  Spinoza  speaks  of  those  who  forget  the  finite 
whenever  they  turn  their  minds  to  God,  and  again 
forget  God  whenever   they  turn   their   minds    to  the 


134  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RELIGION. 

finite  vvorld.^  But,  on  the  principles  of  Mr.  Spencer, 
such  forgetfulness  is  absolutely  necessary;  for,  on  these 
principles,  it  is  impossible  to  think  of  the  infinite  except 
by  abstracting  from  all  that  determines  the  finite  as 
such,  and  especially  from  the  two  imperfect  modes 
in  which  the  finite  is  given  to  us.  On  the  other 
hand,  if  these  two  modes  of  the  infinite  be  in  vital 
relation  to  each  other — if  there  be  no  element  in 
self-consciousness  which  does  not  involve  a  relation 
to  objects,  and  no  element  in  the  consciousness  of 
objects  which  does  not  involve  a  relation  to  the  self 
— it  })ecomes  absurd  to  suppose  that,  in  rising  to 
that  principle  of  unity  which  is  presupposed  in  both, 
we  need  to  turn  our  back  upon  either.  Eather, 
we  must  say  that,  in  rising  to  that  unity,  our  in- 
telligence is,  for  the  first  time,  taking  up  the  point 
of  view  from  which  they  can  be  seen  as  they  truly 
are.  It  is  our  divided  consciousness,  in  which  we  take 
finite  things  as  if  they  could  be  understood  in  their 
isolation,  in  which  we  rend  the  self  from  the  world 
and  both  from  (jod — it  is  this  consciousness  that 
misleads  us.  Nor  can  we  see  anything  in  its  true 
meaning  and  import,  till,  in  a  sense,  we  "  see  all  things 
in  God,"  i.e.  till  we  see  them  from  the  point  of  view 
of  their  unity  as  parts  of  one  organic  whole,  as  the  mani- 
festations of  one  principle.  The  ultimate  unity,  which, 
as  Mr.  Spencer  rightly  maintains,  is  presupposed  in 
'  Eth.  II.  1(1,  .Scliol.  ± 


DUALISTIC  VIEW  OF  CONSCIOUSNESS.     135 

all  our  knowledge  of  objects  and  of  ourselves,  is  the 
end  as  well  as  the  beginning  of  that  knowledge.  And, 
when  we  carry  our  life  back  to  it,  we  do  not  submerge 
all  our  knowing  and  beinef  in  a  gulf  of  nescience,  but 
only  bring  it  into  relation  with  the  principle  by  which 
it  must  ultimately  be  explained.  On  the  other  hand,. 
Mr.  Spencer's  view  involves  that,  after  all  the  other 
questions  which  we  can  answer,  we  come  upon  a  ques- 
tion which  we  can  never  answer,  and  in  the  attempt  to 
answer  which  all  our  previous  results  give  us  no  help. 
If  that  were  the  case,  we  must  undoubtedly  agree  with 
him  in  regarding  the  whole  movement  of  religious  life 
as  an  effort  to  determine  the  indeterminable,  to  give 
imaginative  form  or  logical  definition  to  that  which  by 
its  very  nature  can  neither  be  perceived  nor  conceived. 
And  the  natural  end  of  the  process  would  simply  be 
the  discovery  of  this  incapacity,  and  the  resolve  to 
'  cultivate  our  gardens,'  and  worship  nothing  at  all. 
On  this  view  the  whole  religious  history  of  man  would 
be  the  process  whereby  he  learns  to  dispense  with  a 
religion :  it  would  be  of  none  but  a  negative  use ; 
for  all  that  it  could  teach  us  would  be  to  recognise 
the  nature  of  the  illusion,  which  thus  at  once  tempts 
and  baffles  us,  and  to  understand  why  it  must  do  both. 
It  would  teach  us,  in  short,  that,  in  the  first  instance, 
we  inevitably  sech  to  define  the  Infinite,  because  the 
consciousness  of  it  is  ever  with  us,  while  we  as  inevit- 
ably fail  to  define  it,  because  it  is  the  infinite,  and 


136  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RELIGION. 

therefore  the  negation  of  all  definition.  We  should 
thus  at  last  discover  the  nature  of  the  adamantine 
wall  which  hems  us  in,  and  we  should  cease  to  waste 
ourselves  in  vain  efforts  to  break  through  it. 

Now,  from  what  has  already  been  said,  it  appears 
that  this  is  just  the  reverse  of  the  truth.  For,  if  the 
self  and  the  object  are  so  essentially  related  as  we 
have  maintained  they  are,  then  all  our  progress  in 
knowledge  of  objects  must  deepen  and  widen  our 
consciousness  of  the  self;  and  all  our  knowledge  of 
ourselves,  won  by  the  whole  effort  of  our  theoretical 
and  practical  lives,  must,  in  its  turn,  be  an  increase 
in  our  knowledge  of  the  objective  world.  Further, 
it  is  obvious  that  when  we  thus  break  down 
the  supposed  wall  of  division  between  the  conscious- 
ness of  self  and  that  of  the  not-self,  we  must  also 
break  down  the  wall  of  division  between  both  and  the 
consciousness  of  God.  And,  instead  of  thinking  of 
ourselves  as  confined  to  the  finite  to  the  exclusion 
of  the  infinite,  we  must  rather  recognise  that  every- 
thing we  can  learn  of  the  former  is  also  a  step  in  the 
knowledge  of  the  latter.  The  consciousness  of  the 
finite  is  based  on  the  idea  of  the  infinite  as  its  first 
presupposition;  nor  can  it  become  knowledge  in  the\ 
highest  sense  till  it  understands  this  presupposition  ;  till, 
in  other  words,  it  recognises  the  consciousness  of  the 
finite  subject  and  the  consciousness  of  the  finite  object 
as  elements  in  the  consciousness  of  God.     Eecognised 


DUALISriC  VIEW  OF  CONSCIOUSNESS.     137 

or  not,  they  are  such  elements  ;  and  the  growth  of  man's 
religious  consciousness  is  therefore  related,  not  acciden- 
tally or  externally,  but  essentially  and  necessarily,  to  his 
growing  knowledge  of  the  world  and  of  himself.  The 
same  development  of  thought  which  shows  itself  in 
the  advance  of  modern  upon  ancient  ideas  of  nature 
and  of  man,  brings  with  it  that  deepening  and  widen- 
ing of  the  idea  of  God  which  may  be  traced  in  Chris- 
tianity, as  compared  with  Greek  Polytheism  and  Jew- 
ish Monotheism :  a  deepening  and  widening  which  is 
perceptible  even  in  the  works  of  those  who  deny 
the  very  existence  of  God,  and  is  sometimes  the 
cause  of  that  denial,  For  a  higher  idea  necessarily 
brings  with  it  greater  ditticulties,  and  its  rise  is  apt  to 
produce  scepticism,  till  those  dilficulties  are  solved. 
We  may  doubt  God's  existence,  just  because  the  idea 
of  Him  has  gained  so  great  fulness  for  us,  that  we 
cannot  easily  satisfy  ourselves  with  imperfect  represen- 
tations of  Him.  If,  on  the  other  hand,  there  appears 
at  any  time  to  be  an  advance  in  man's  knowledge  of 
the  finite  world  without  a  corresponding  advance  in 
the  religious  consciousness,  we  may  explain  it  by  the 
alternating  way  in  which  the  process  of  development 
necessarily  goes  on.  In  the  slow  secular  progress  of 
man's  spiritual  history,  one  element  may  often  seem  to 
gain  a  temporary  prominence  at  the  expense  of  another. 
The  interest  of  the  outward  life  may  for  a  time  throw 
that  of  the  inward  life  into  the  shade;  or,  on  the  other 


138  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RELIGION. 

hand,  an  intense  self-consciousness  may  fur  a  time 
cause  the  individual  to  withdraw  into  himself  from  his 
natural  and  social  environment.  And.  in  like  manner, 
the  finite  interests  of  man's  earthly  existence  may  for  a 
time  seem  to  leave  no  room  for  the  development  of  the 
religious  consciousness.  But  if,  according  to  the  Ger- 
man proverb,  it  is  provided  that  the  trees  shall  not 
grow  into  the  sky,  it  is  equally  provided  that  they  shall 
always  grow  towards  it ;  and  the  sinking  of  the  roots 
deeper  into  the  soil  is  inevitably  accompanied  or  fol- 
lowed by  a  farther  expansion  of  the  branches.  Human 
development  will  belie  all  its  past  history,  if  the  new 
light  upon  man's  relations  to  the  world  and  to  his 
fellowmen,  which  science  is  every  day  bringing  to  us, 
does  not  give  occasion  to  a  new  evolution  or  interpre- 
tation of  the  idea  of  God.^ 

To  overcome  an  error,  we  must  discern  its  partial 
truth.  In  one  way  Mr.  Spencer's  view  meets  and 
satisfies  the  religious  consciousness.  It  was  not  in  an 
irreligious  spirit  that  the  friend  of  Job  asked  the 
question,  "  Canst  thou  by  searching  find  out  God, 
canst  thou  find  out  the  Almighty  to  perfection  ? " 
"  Verily  Thou  art  a  God  that  hidest  Thyself,  0  God 
of  Israel,  the  Saviour,"  said   the  prophet  Isaiah.      "  Of 

'  111  what  has  been  as  yet  said,  it  will  be  observed  that  we 
have  to  do  only  with  the  abstract  idea  of  God  as  a  principle  of 
unity  in  all  our  consciousness,  not  with  any  further  conception 
of  Him  such  as  we  may  afterwards  meet  with  in  special 
religions. 


DUALISTIC  VIEW  OF  CONSCIOUSNESS.     139 

Thee,"  said  Hooker,  "  our  fittest  eloquence  is  silence, 
while  we  confess  without  confessing  that  Thy  glory  is 
unsearchable  and  beyond  our  reach."  Such  utterances 
of  the  religious  consciousness  have  sometimes  been 
used  to  confirm  the  idea  that  God  is,  in  the  proper 
sense,  iinknoiccibh:.  And  Mansel,  with  a  strange  un- 
consciousness of  the  meaning  of  his  own  logic,  tried  to 
show  that  all  revealed  religion  is  founded  upon  that 
doctrine.  But  to  say  that  we  cannot  know  CJ-od  to 
perfection,  is  only  to  say  that  we  cannot  know  every- 
thing ;  while  to  say  that  we  cannot  know  Him  at  all  is 
to  say  that  we  can  know  nothing.  We  cannot  know 
God  to  perfection,  because  we  cannot  know  the  world 
or  ourselves  to  perfection  ;  but  all  our  knowledge  is 
based  on  the  presence  of  these  three  inseparable 
elements  of  consciousness  within  us,  and  all  our  know- 
ledge is  therefore  a  part  of  the  knowledge  of  God.  It 
is  true  that,  just  because  He  is  the  light  of  all  our 
seeing.  He  can  never  be  completely  seen  ;  for  the  return 
we  make  on  the  ultimate  presupposition  of  our  being 
can  never  be  a  final  return.  It  is  true  that  "  the 
margin  "  of  knowledge  "  fades  for  ever  and  for  ever  as 
we  move  " ;  but,  if  we  might  correct  the  metaphor,  it 
fades  not  hefore  us  merely,  but  also  into  us.  We  are 
not  condemned  to  chase  a  phantom  which  continually 
flies  before  us,  so  that  we  are  as  near  it  at  first  as  at 
last.  liather,  we  are  pursuing  a  course  of  self-develop- 
ment   in    which   we   are    continually    realising    more 


140  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RELIGION. 

deeply  and  fully  what  the  world,  the  object  of  all  our 
thought  and  action,  is,  and  what  we  are,  who  think  and 
act  upon  it ;  and  in  which,  by  necessary  consequence, 
we  are  continually  learning  more  of  God,  who  is  the 
ultimate  unity  of  our  own  life  and  of  the  life  of  the 
world.  Our  growing  knowledge  amid  seeming  ignor- 
ance may  perhaps  be  illustrated  by  an  imperfect 
analogy.  It  is  sometimes  said  that  we  cannot  know 
the  mind  of  Shakspeare,  because  we  cannot  gather  to  a 
focus  in  one  inclusive  conception  all  the  wealth  of 
thought  and  feeling  which  presents  itself,  when  we  try 
to  form  an  estimate  of  such  a  many-sided  genius.  In 
reality,  we  know  more  of  the  mind  of  Shakspeare  than 
we  know  of  that  of  many  of  our  nearest  friends ;  for 
the  good  reason  that  there  is  a  great  deal  more  to 
know.  In  like  manner,  a  deep  sense  of  the  impos- 
sibility of  measuring  the  object  which  goes  along 
with  the  idea  of  God — the  feeling  that  prompts  St. 
Paul,  after  saying  that  "  we  know  God,"  to  correct 
himself  and  add :  "  or  rather  are  known  of  God  " — 
must  always  be  an  element  in  our  consciousness  of 
the  divine  principle  of  unity  from  which  all  our 
rational  life  proceeds  and  to  which  it  tends,  and  to 
the  growing  apprehension  of  which  all  knowledge  is 
to  be  regarded  as  a  contribution.  For  all  our  diffi- 
culties of  thought  and  action  must  inevitably  gather 
to  a  climax  in  our  religion,  just  because  our  reli- 
gious view  of  things,  if  it  be  real  and   sincere,  is  the 


DU A  LI  STIC  VIEW  OF  CONSCIOUSNESS.     141 

final  summing  up — the  concentrated  result — of  all  our 
thought  and  activity. 

A   farther   reason,  why  we  are  specially  conscious 
of  ignorance  in   this  sphere,  may,  as  I  have  already 
suggested,  be  derived  from  the  fact  that  human  life 
is  a  process  of  development,   and   that   in   the   order 
of  development   the    secular    consciousness,   the    con- 
sciousness  of    the   finite   world   and   of   the    concerns 
of  our  finite  life  in  it,  anticipates  or  is  prior  to  the 
religious  consciousness.     Hence  the  latter  passes  into 
a   new   phase   only   in   order  to   correspond  with  the 
advance    and    meet     the     difficulties    of   the    former. 
Thus  in  the  secular  consciousness  there  are  continu- 
ally arising   new  questions  and  wants,  new  divisions 
of  the  elements  of  our  existence  against  each  other, 
new   conflicts   of  thought    and    will,    which    are    im- 
perfectly met  in  any  solution  or  reconciliation  given 
as  yet  by  religion,  and  which,  therefore,  may  be  said    ^ 
to  antid'patc  a  new  development  of  the  religious  idea. 
Eeligion  is  thus  constantly  struggling  with  a  growing    ^ 
problem  to  which  no  solution  is  final.      In  this  sense,  1 
therefore,   it   is   possible   even   for   the   religious  man  | 
to  say  that  he  does  not  hnow  God,  without  knowledge 
of    whom,    nevertheless,    all    his    religion     would     be    f' 
baseless.     And  we  can  understand  that  in  the  violent 
antithesis   of  his  rhetoric,   St.   Augustine   is   uttering    ^ 
a  truth  when  he  says  that  the  divine  Being  scicndo 
ignoratur  d  nesciendo  cognoscitur.     "  When  we  would 


142  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RELIGION. 

say   we   know    Him,    He   is  hid   from    us :   when    we 
declare  that  we  know  Him  not,  He  is  revealed  to  us." 
Such  verbal   contradiction    is   only   a   more   emphatic 
way    of    expressing    the    fact    that    in    the    religious 
consciousness   all   our   knowledge   and   all    our    sense 
of  its  defects  are  concentrated  in  one — concentrated, 
just  because  it  is  in  this  sphere  that  we  cease  for  a 
moment  to  be  the  victims  of  abstraction,  or  to  satisfy 
ourselves  with  the  imperfect  and  hypothetical  modes 
of  thought  which  are  sufficient  for  ordinary  purposes; 
Just  because   we  are  here  in  direct  contact  with  the 
absolute  reality,  which  is  the  beginning  and  the  end 
of  all    our   rational   life.      For    where    we    rise    most 
alove,  our   finitude,    there    of  necessity   we    are    most 
distinctly    conscious    of   it.      But    this    is    something 
very    different     from    the    consciousness    of    an    iron 
wall  of  limitation,  fixed  by  our  finite  nature,  behind 
which  the  infinite  is  for  ever  hid  from  us.      On  the 
contrary,  it  is  the  consciousness  of  a  Presence  within 
and  without  us,  which,  if  it  makes  "  our  mortal  nature 
tremble  like    a   guilty   thing   surprised,"   is   yet   "the 
master-light   of  all   our    seeing,"    and    is    continually 
lifting  us  above  the  weakness  of  which  it  makes  us 
^  j  aware.      Our  ignorance  of  God  is  thus,  in  one  aspect 
\      of  it,   the  effect   of  too  much  knowledge.      For  it  is 
simply  the  incapacity  of  rising  to  the  idea  of  a  unity, 
which  yet  is  implied  in  all  our  knowledge;  or  it  is 
the  incapacity  which  necessarily  besets  every  growino- 


DUALISTIC  VIEW  OF  CONSCIOUSNESS.      143 

intelligence,  of  fully  realising  that  unity  amid  the 
many  conflicting  interests  of  our  theoretical  and 
practical  life.  In  either  case  it  is  consistent  with 
a  conviction  that  man's  finite  existence  is  positively,  \ 
and  not  merely  negatively,  related  to  the  infinite : 
it  is  consistent  with  the  idea  that  the  divine  is 
"  not  far  from  any  one  of  us,"  and  that,  indeed, 
we  can  know  nothing,  not  even  ourselves,  except 
in   the  liaht  of  it. 


Wliile  these  pages  are  jjassing  through  the  press,  luy  atten- 
tion has  been  directed  (by  Professor  Paulsen's  Einleitung  in 
die  Philosophie,  p.  319)  to  certain  passages  in  the  concluding 
sections  of  Mr.  Spencer's  Ecclesiastical  Institutions  which, 
though  callable  of  being  interpreted  in  conformity  with  the 
view  of  religion  given  in  the  First  Principles,  yet  suggest  a 
more  positive  idea  of  it.  Thus  in  §§  659-660,  Mr.  Spencer 
argues  that  though  "  the  very  notions,  origin,  cause,  and 
purpose,  are  relative  notions  belonging  to  human  thought,' 
which  are  probably  irrelevant  to  the  Ultimate  Reality,"  yet, 
"  amid  the  mysteries  which  become  the  more  mysterious,  the 
more  they  are  thought  about,  there  will  remain  one  absolute 
certainty,  that  he  is  ever  in  the  presence  of  an  Infinite  and 
Eternal  Energy,  from  which  all  things  proceed."  This  energy 
Mr.  Spencer  farther  characterises  thus  :  "  The  last  stage 
reached,"  in  the  development  of  religion,  "  is  recognition  of 
the  truth  that  force  as  it  exists  beyond  consciousness,  cannot 
be  like  what  we  know  as  force  within  consciousness  ;  and 
that  yet,  as  either  is  capable  of  generating  the  other,  they 
must  be  different  modes  of  the  same.  Consequently,  the  final 
outcome  of  that  speculation  commenced  by  the  primitive  man, 
is  that  the  Power  manifested  throughout  the  world  distinguished 
as  material,  is  the  same  Power  which  in  ourselves  wells  up 
under  the  form  of  consciousness."     In  the  next  section,  Mr. 


144  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RELIGION. 

Spencer  goes  on  to  say  that  "  those  who  think  that  science 
is  dissipating  religious  beliefs  and  sentiments,  seem  unaware 
that  whatever  of  mystery  is  taken  from  tlie  old  interpretation, 
is  added  to  the  new."  Farther  on  in  the  same  section  he  takes 
occasion  to  remark  that  "  the  necessity  we  are  under  to  think 
of  the  external  energy  in  terms  of  the  internal  energy,  gives 
rather  a  spiritualistic  than  a  materialistic  interpretation  to  the 
Universe  "  ;  though  further  thought  obliges  us  "  to  recognise 
the  truth  that  a  conceptioii  given  in  phenomenal  manifestations 
of  this  ultimate  energy  can  in  no  wise  show  us  what  it  is." 
Towards  the  end  of  the  section,  Mr.  Spencer  compares  our 
present  knowledge  of  things  to  "  an  undeveloped  musical 
faculty  which  is  able  only  to  appreciate  a  single  melody,  but 
cannot  grasp  the  variously  entangled  passages  of  a  symphony." 
"  So,  by  future  more  evolved  intelligences,  the  course  of  things 
now  apprehensible  only  in  parts  may  be  apprehensible  all 
together,  with  an  accompanying  feeling  as  much  beyond  that 
of  the  present  cultured  man,  as  his  feeling  is  beyond  that  of  the 
savage.  And  this  feeling  is  not  likely  to  be  decreased  but 
rather  to  be  increased  by  that  analysis  of  knowledge  which, 
while  forcing  him  to  Agnosticism,  yet  continually  prompts  him 
to  imagine  some  solution  of  the  Great  Enigma  which  he  knows 
cannot  be  solved."  In  this  passage,  Mr.  Spencer  seems  for  a 
moment  to  hesitate  between  the  idea  of  the  absolute  unknow- 
ableness  of  God,  and  the  idea  of  an  imperfection  of  knowledge 
due  to  the  conditions  of  an  intelligence  which  is  in  course  of 
development.  These  statements  are  all  so  guarded  that  they 
are  capable  of  being  reduced  to  the  Dualistic  and  Agnostic  theory 
of  the  First  Pnnciples,  but  I  think  they  would  lose  a  great  part 
of  their  meaning  if  this  reduction  were  strictly  carried  out.  At 
least,  they  show  that,  if  Mr.  Spencer  still  adheres  to  the  doctrine 
that  religion  is  based  on  a  consciousness  of  the  Unknowable,  yet 
he  is  anxious  to  claim  for  it  some  of  those  feelings  of  reverential 
awe,  which  are  possible  only  towards  that  which  we  partly  know 
and,  therefore,  see  to  be  worthy  of  our  reverence. 


LECTUEE  SIXTH. 

THE  IDEA  OF  GOD  AS  THE  BEGINNING  AND  THE  END  OF 
KNOWLEDGE. 

Mr.  Spencer's  Way  of  Reaching  the  Infinite  hy  Abstraction — Its 
Likeness  to  the  Method  of  the  Mystics — Logical  Error  of 
Mysticism — Necessity  of  Combining  Syyithesis  with  Analysis — 
That  the  Development  of  Knowledge  is  Organic,  and  therefore 
at  once  Progressive  and  Regressive — The  Idea  of  God  as  the 
Ultimate  Principle — Kants  Three  Ideas  as  at  once  the  Pre- 
suppositions and  Objects  of  Knowledge — That  Principles  are 
not  necessarily  Objects  of  Faith  as  opposed  to  Knoioledge — 
Elustration  from  Ethics — God  as  the  First  Priticiple  and  the 
Ultimate  Object  of  Knotoledge. 

We  have  now  considered  the  main  elements  of  Mr. 
Spencer's  view  of  religion,  and  of  the  relations  of  the 
religious  idea  to  experience.  We  have  seen  that  in  his 
view,  the  essence  of  religion  lies  in  a  '  consciousness  ' 
of  the  infinite  which  can  never  become  knowledge, 
and  that,  on  the  other  hand,  what  we  call  knowledge 
is  for  him  a  double  consciousness  of  the  finite  which 
can  never  be  brought  into  harmony  with  itself.  The 
finite  is  thus  supposed  to  be  presented  to  us  in  two 
independent    modes   of  inner    and    outer    experience, 

VOL.  I.  K 


146  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RELIGION. 

,  which  confront  each  other  in  irreconcilalDle  opposition, 
V.(»Y  ^  so  that  it  is  impossible  either  to  reduce  one  of  them 
to  the  other,  or  to  explain  both  as  the  forms  of  a 
higher  principle.  In  opposition  to  this  view,  I  endea- 
voured to  show  that  the  two  modes  of  finite  experience 
of  which  Mr.  Spencer  speaks,  the  consciousness  of  the 
objective  world  and  the  consciousness  of  our  own  sub- 
jective life,  are  essentially  related  to  each  other ;  and, 
indeed,  that  neither  of  them  has  any  meaning  or  con- 
tent apart  from  this  relation.  Consequently,  every 
step  we  make  in  the  knowledge  of  either  is  a  step  in 
the  knowledge  of  the  other,  and  also  of  the  principle 
of  unity  which  is  presupposed  in  both.  Thus  our 
intelligence — as  indeed  is  implied  in  its  being  a  self- 
conscious  intelligence — moves  in  a  continual  cycle;  and 
all  the  knowledge  it  can  gain  either  in  the  experience 
of  the  outer  or  of  the  inner  life,  must  ultimately  cast  \ 
new  light  upon  the  principle  from  which  it  starts. 
God,  or  the  infinite,  is  the  presupposition  of  all  our 
rational  life,  and,  therefore,  the  knowledge  of  God  is 
.the  final  goal  to  which  it  tends.  ^/^ 

^  In  order  to  give  a  little  further  illustration  to  this 
theme,  which  is  of  fundamental  importance  in  the 
philosophy  of  religion,  it  may  be  useful  again  to  call 
attention  to  the  defect  in  Mr.  Spencer's  method  which 
leads  him  to  an  opposite  result,  and  makes  him  regard 
the  infinite,  which  he  acknowledges  to  be  the  presup- 
position  of  all   knowledge,   as   in    itself  unknowable. 


GOD  AS  THE  END  OF  KNOWLEDGE.        147 

Mr.  Spencer,  as  I  have  already  pointed  out,  accepts 
the  principle  of  Spinoza  that  "  determination  is  nega- 
tion." Under  the  conditions  of  human  thought,  it  is 
impossible  to  determine  what  anything  is,  except  by 
the  negative  process  of  distinguishing  it  from  other 
things,  i.e.  of  saying  what  it  is  not ;  and  a  negative 
process,  as  Mr.  Spencer  thinks,  is  necessarily  one 
which  is  always  carrying  us  farther  and  farther  away 
from"  the  positive  nature,  or  real  being  of  things. 
Hence  it  follows  that,  in  order  to  reach  that  reality 
which  is  without  negation,  that  absolutely  real  being 
which  is  beyond  and  beneath  all  other  being,  we 
must  invert  this  process  and  get  rid  of  those  deter- 
minations that  hide  it  from  us.  Our  regress  upon 
the  infinite  is  thus  a  process  of  abstraction,  in  which 
we  strip  away  all  the  determinations  of  the  finite ; 
and  the  infinite  upon  which  regress  is  made  is 
simply  the  pure  '  being,'  the  abstraction  of  bare  posi- 
tion or  affirmation,  which  remains  when  we  have  taken 
away  all  distinction  and  relation  from  its  simple  unity 
with  itself.  As  in  the  dawn  of  Greek  philosophy  the 
Eleatics  reduced  the  content  of  philosophy  to  the 
simple  principle  that  '  all  is  one/ — as  if,  in  the  all- 
embracing  intuition  of  the  whole,  every  difference  was 
lost  or  submerged  ;  so  Mr.  Spencer  lets  every  distinc-  1 
tion  of  the  finite,  even  the  last  distinction  of  self  and  / 
not-self,  drop  away,  and  rests  in  the  emptiness  of  the 
infinite,  as  if  it  alone  were  the  reality  of  all  realities. 


148  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RELIGION. 

Now  we  should  scarcely  have  expected  to  find  Saul 
among  the  prophets,  or  an  apostle  of  modern  science 
among  the  mystics.  But  the  great  error  of  mysticism 
was  just  this,  that  it  thought  to  reach  the  deepest 
reality,  the  absolute  truth  of  things,  by  the  via 
iwga.tiva,  the  way  of  abstraction  and  negation ;  in 
other  words,  that  it  tried  to  approach  the  infinite  by 
turning  its  back  upon  the  finite,  and  not  by  seeking 
more  thoroughly  to  understand  the  finite.  Hence  the 
mystics  supposed  that  the  highest  idea — that  which 
comes  closest  to  the  truth  of  things — must  necessarily 
be  that  which  has  least  content ;  and  they  treated  pure 
b^ing,  the  simplest  of  all  abstractions,  as  representing 
something  more  real  than  is  to  be  found  in  any 
specific  form  of  existence.  To  them,  this  simplest 
of  all  thoughts  seemed  to  have  a  depth  of  mysterious 
significance  which  no  other  thought  could  claim  ;  and 
when  they  were  battled  in  the  efibrt  to  fathom  this 
self-made  mystery,  they  immediately  proceeded  to  ex- 
plain their  failure  by  the  limitations  of  the  human 
mind,  and  the  unsearchableness  of  God.  In  truth, 
they  were  "  seeking  the  living  among  the  dead."  The 
astronomer  who  denied  the  existence  of  God,  because 
he  had  swept  the  heavens  with  his  telescope  and  had 
not  been  able  to  find  Him,  was  a  wise  man  compared 
with  those  who  sup^^osed  that  He  was  hidden  in  the 
emptiest  of  all  our  ideas,  and  who  blamed  the  weak- 
ness  of  their  mental  vision,  because  they  could  not 


GOD  AS  THE  END  OF  KNOWLEDGE.        149 

find  Him  there.  For,  of  a  truth,  there  is  no  mystery 
of  any  kind  in  the  idea  of  '  being '  in  the  abstract, 
excej^t  its  abstractness,  i.e.  its  imperfection.  But  this 
imperfection  or  incompleteness  is  such,  that,  whenever 
we  think  of  it,  we  are  forced  to  go  beyond  it,  and  to 
give  it  some  farther  determination  or  characterisation, 
in  order  that  we  may  bring  it  nearer  to  our  thought. 
Strained  to  this  extreme  of  abstraction,  our  thought 
springs  back  like  a  bent  bow,  and  seeks  to  fill  up  the 
void  with  matter.  But  this  means  not  that  '  pure 
being '  is  incomprehensible,  but  rather  that  it  is  only 
too  easily  comprehensible  :  not,  indeed,  as  an  independ- 
ent reality  which  is  complete  in  itself,  but  as  an  element 
in  a  greater  whole,  which  we  may  distinguish  but  can- 
not separate  from  its  other  elements.  To  attempt  to 
fix  it  in  abstraction  is  therefore  to  deprive  it  of  what- 
ever meaning  it  has.  And  to  complain  that  when 
we  have  thus  isolated  it,  we  cannot  discover  in  it  the 
fulness  of  reality — which  we  naturally  expect  the 
highest  principle  of  thought  and  reality  to  possess — 
or  to  blame  the  human  mind  for  its  incapacity  to  see 
such  fulness  in  it,  is  to  shut  our  eyes  and  complain  \ 
that  darkness  is  not  visible.  It  is  not  the  weak- 
ness, but  the  strength  of  the  intelligence  that  prevents 
it  from  treating  a  part  as  if  it  were  a  whole,  a  relative 
term  as  if  it  existed  apart  from  everything  else. 

And  this  leads  me  to  say  that  the  error  of  mysti- 
cism— the   supposition  that  the  vin  negativa,  the  way 


150  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RELIGION. 

of  abstraction,  will  lead  to  the  highest  truth,  or 
indeed  to  any  truth  at  all — is  one  of  the  most  perni- 
cious errors  in  philosophy.  Abstraction  or  analysis 
is  an  element  in  scientific  method,  'out  taken  by 
itself  it  will  produce  nothing  but  a  mere  external 
arrangement  of  things  by  genera  and  species — what 
is  called  in  Logic  a  '  tree  of  Porphyry,'  the  tree  that 
of  all  others  best  realises  the  nursery  rhyme :  "  This 
is  the  tree  that  never  grew."  Only  in  so  far  as  the 
comparison  of  many  facts  enables  us  to  detect  in 
them  a  principle  of  unity  which  dominates  all  their 
difference  and  explains  it,  can  abstraction  lead  to  any 
valuable  result.  The  abstracting  or  analytic  process, 
by  whicli  unity  is  separated  from  difference,  is  nothing 
without  the  synthetic  process,  by  which  unity  is  dis- 
cerned in  difference,  as  the  principle  which  at  once 
originates  and  overcomes  it.  The  true  method,  there- 
fore, is  a  method  which  combines  analysis  and  syn- 
thesis in  one,  and  which  moves  forward  by  a  per- 
petual systole-diastole,  at  once  towards  a  higher  unity 
of  thought  and  towards  a  more  complete  determination 
and  articulation  of  all  the  facts  embraced  under  it. 
It  is,  as  Mr.  Spencer  himself  has  done  much  to  show, 
a  process  both  of  differentiation  and  of  integration  ;  .  and 
its  aim  is  to  make  knowledge  not  merely  a  system, 
but  an  organic  system,  in  which  every  part  is  seen 
in  its  due  relation  to  the  other  parts,  because  it  is 
seen   to   be   determined    by   the   one   principle    which 


GOD  AS  THE  END  OF  KNOWLEDGE.        151 

gives  life  to  the  whole.  In  this  process  abstraction 
and  analysis  have  undoubtedly  a  great  part  to  play : 
for  what  science  and  philosophy  want  is  to  rise 
from  the  particular  to  the  universal ;  or,  in  other 
words,  to  reduce  to  one  simple  explanation  many 
facts  which  previously  have  lain  scattered  and  un-  ■ 
related.  But  this  simplification  is  valuable  only  be- 
cause it  enables  us  to  see  our  way  through  many 
details  and  complexities  which  have  hitherto  resisted 
all  the  efforts  of  our  thought,  but  which  become  pliant , 
and  intelligible  to  him  who  has  grasped  the  law  of 
their  variation.  If,  after  we  have  reached  such  a 
universal  or  law,  such  a  simple  explanation  of  many 
complex  phenomena,  we  are  sometimes  at  lil^erty  to 
dismiss  many  of  the  particular  details  from  our 
memory,  and  to  regard  ourselves  as  possessing  in 
the  law  the  substance  and  Icernel  of  them  all,  this 
is  only  because  in  the  law  we  have  a  clue  to  guide 
us  to  the  particulars  which  at  any  time  it  may  seem 
necessary  to  verify.  For  the  claim  of  any  law  or 
principle  to  be  regarded  as  representing  the  truth 
of  things  in  a  higher  degree  than  any  of  the  par- 
ticulars that  fall  under  it,  lies  not  in  its  abstractness, 
but  rather  in  its  concreteness,  i.e.  in  the  fact  that 
it  is  the  brief  abstract  or  quintessence  of  many  par- 
ticulars ;  that,  in  short,  it  is  the  fertile  source  to  which 
may  be  traced,  and  by  which  may  be  explained,  not 
only  the  particular  effect.?  whence  our  first  knowledge 


152  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RELIGION. 

of  it  was  derived,  but  an  indefinite  number  of  other 
effects  which  were  not  at  first  present  to  us. 

Now  all  this  has  a  definite  application  to  our 
subject.  For,  if  it  be  true  that  the  necessary 
method  of  our  thought  is  synthetic  as  well  as  ana- 
lytic, that,  in  other  words,  its  object  is  to  bring  many' 
particulars  to  a  focus  in  one  thought,  and  so  to 
detect  the  one  simple  principle  that  underlies  all 
their  difference,  then  the  universal,  the  one  in  the 
many,  cannot  be  taken  as  a  mere  product  of  our 
own  mind,  but  must  be  regarded  as  the  most  real 
of  all  things,  and  indeed  as  the  source  of  all  other 
reality.  And  this  must  above  all  apply  to  the  object 
of  religion,  which  Mr.  Spencer  calls  by  the  name  of 
the  infinite.  If  the  infinite,  as  he  maintains,  is  the 
ultimate  unity  to  which  all  things  must  be  referred, 
and  if  the  consciousness  of  it  underlies  all  our  know- 
ledge, it  cannot  be  right  to  take  it  as  an  empty  abstrac- 
tion or  generality,  which  in  itself  is  indeterminate  and 
incapable  in  any  way  of  determining  itself.  If  our 
consciousness  is  necessarily  one  with  itself  in  all  its 
difference,  and  if  the  factors  that  make  it  up,  the  ob- 
jective and  the  subjective  consciousness,  are  necessarily 
bound  together,  so  that  one  of  them  cannot  be  con- 
ceived without  the  other,  then  the  idea  which,  as  Mr. 
Spencer  confesses,  is  the  keystone  of  this  unity,  the 
principle  that  makes  it  one  consciousness,  cannot  be 
empty  and  indeterminate.      On  the  contrary,  as  it  is 


GOD  AS  THE  END  OF  KNOWLEDGE.        153 

implied  in  all  our  other  consciousness,  and  as  it  is  that 
which  gives  unity  to  all  our  other  consciousness,  so  it 
must  be  the  most  fertile  of  all  principles — that  by 
which  all  other  principles  must  ultimately  be  ex- 
plained, and  without  reference  to  which,  no  other  ex- 
planation can  finally  satisfy  us.  Just  because  it  is 
the  primary  truth  upon  which  all  our  intellectual 
and  practical  life  is  built,  it  must  be  that  which 
casts  light  upon  everything,  and  upon  which  every- 
thing reflects  back  light.  If  it  is  the  most  universal  ' 
of  ideas,  it  must  at  the  same  time  be  the  one  which  is\ 
fullest  of  meaning  and  that  which,  indeed,  is  continu- 
ally fertile  of  new  meanings ;  for  its  universality  means  ~^ 
not  merely  that  it  excludes  nothing,  but  that  it  in- 
cludes and  explains  everything.  In  a  sense  such  a 
universal  may  be  beyond  knowledge ;  not,  however, 
because  it  is  too  vague  and  general  for  definite 
thought,  but  for  the  opposite  reason,  that  it  is  m-\ 
exhaustible.  It  hides  itself,  if  at  all,  not  in  dark- 
ness but  in  light.  It  is  the  ground  on  which  we 
stand,  the  atmosphere  which  surrounds  us,  the  light 
by  which  we  see  and  the  heaven  that  shuts  us  in. 
It  is  not  only  in  all,  but  to  all,  and  through  all. 

"  Intra  cunctu  nee  inclusus, 
Extra  euncta  nee  exclusus." 

But,  just  for  that  reason,  everything  we  know  is  a 
contribution  to  the  knowledge  of  it,  and  nothing  can 
be  really  known  apart  from  it.      For  if  it  be  true  that 


154  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RELIGION. 

our  intelligence  is  organic,  it  cannot  grow  but  by  the 

/  /    evolution  of  its  first  principle,  and  every  differentiation 

//       of  its  organs  and  functions  must  bring  %vitli  it,  or  after 

'  '.        it,   a   new    integration ;    which    in    this   case    means    a 

deepening  knowledge  of  the  principle  itself. 

Perhaps  I  may  make  this  point  a  little  clearer 
by  saying  that  the  growth  of  knowledge,  and  the 
development  of  our  intelligence  that  goes  with  it, 
is  at  once  a  p7'o^?Tsswc  and  a  regressive  process.  By 
this  I  mean  that  the  effort  which  gives  rise  to  all 
science  and  philosophy — to  find  the  unity  of  law 
under  the  difference  of  facts,  and  the  unity  of  a 
higher  principle  under  the  difference  of  laws — is  an 
effort  to  verify  and  realise  in  detail  that  which,  by  our 
nature  as  rational  beings,  we  practically  assume  from 
the  first.  The  earliest  writer  who  pointed  definitely 
to  this  view,  though  he  did  not  fully  express  it,  was 
Kant.  Kant  said  that  the  impulse  which  stimulates 
us  to  seek  knowledge,  and  the  principle  that  guides 
us  in  acquiring  it,  are  both  ultimately  due  to  three 
ideas  bound  up  with  all  our  consciousness — the  ideas 
of  the  world,  the  self,  and  Clod.  These  ideas  are  the 
Jii'st  presuppositions  of  our  intelligence,  and  at  the 
same  time  they  mark  out  the  highest  ends  at  which 
that  intelligence  can  aim.  We  assume,  to  begin 
with,  the  unity  of  the  world  in  all  the  diversity  of 
f,  its  phenomena,  or  rather  we  go  upon  the  tacit  as- 
sumption of  it;  for  even   to  the  most   uncultured  in- 


GOD  AS  THE  END  OF  KNOWLEDGE.        155 

telligence  it  is  one  work],  in  one  space  and  one  k 
time.  Yet  to  demonstrate  the  unity  of  the  world, 
to  exhibit  the  necessary  interconnexion  of  all  its 
changing  phases,  the  reciprocal  relations  of  all  its 
parts  and  laws,  is  the  last  goal  of  science.  We 
assume,  again,  the  identity  of  the  self  through  all  ^ 
its  various  and  constantly  changing  stream  of  thoughts 
and  feelings ;  for  no  rational  being  can  think  of 
there  being  more  than  one  self,  one  centre  of  con- 
sciousness within  him.  The  very  conception  of  a 
"  varied  many-coloured  self,"  as  Kant  once  put  it, 
i.e.  of  a  self  which  is  not  an  absolute  unity  through 
all  the  diversity  of  its  experience,  would  involve  a 
scepticism  fatal  to  all  thought  or  knowledge.  Yet 
to  work  out  this  apparently  simple  presupposition  of 
all  our  life — to  show  the  identity  of  the  self  as 
realised  in  all  the  diversity  of  its  powers,  and  main- 
tained through  all  the  changes  of  its  intellectual 
and  moral  history — is  the  never  perfectly  attained 
goal  of  all  psychology.  Lastly,  the  intercourse  of 
the  soul  with  the  world  always  presupposes  an  y^ 
ultimate  unity,  a  principle  which  is  revealed  in  all 
their  difference  and  which  overcomes  it ;  and  the 
consciousness  of  this  unity  has  underlain  all  the  \ 
religious  life  of  man  in  all  ages.  Yet  to  make 
intelligible  in  detail  the  complete  correlation  of  the 
inner  and  the  outer  life,  and  to  show  how  the  ever 
renewed    conflict   and   reconciliation   of  the    self    and 


156  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RELIGION. 

the  world  become  the  means  to  the  realisation  of 
that  principle  of  unity,  which  is  continually  working 
in  both,  would  be  to  attain  the  highest  aim  of  all 
Philosophy  and  Theology ;  it  would  be  to  perfect 
religion  and  bring  it  to  complete  self-consciousness. 
These  ideas  are  thus  at  once  the  beginning  and 
the  end  of  our  rational  life.  At  first,  therefore,  they 
are  rather  presupposed  than  distinctly  thought  of  or 
expressed :  or,  at  least,  the  thought  and  expression  of 
them  are  for  a  long  time  very  inadequate  and  incom- 
plete. At  first,  they  seem  too  near  to  man,  to  be  in 
any  pro]3er  sense  knoion  to  him.  Just  because  they 
are  one  with  the  very  existence  of  his  intelligence, ' 
he  takes  them  for  granted  without  thinking  of  them, 
or  believes  in  them  on  evidence  which  is  altogether 
insufficient.  He  accepts  them  without  criticism,  in 
any  shape  in  which  they  may  be  presented  to  him, 
and  without  discerning  their  real  character  and  mean- 
ing. Yet  from  the  first  they  show  their  presence 
in  his  spirit  by  the  efforts  which  they  force  him 
to  make,  to  discover  some  kind  of  self-consistent 
explanation  of  his  life  and  of  the  world  in  which  he 
lives,  and  to  connect  both  with  some  power  which 
he  represents  as  divine.  It  is,  hovvever,  only  through 
a  long  process  of  development  that  the  infiuence  of 
these  ideas  makes  itself  felt  in  restraining  and  guid- 
ing the  wayward  movement  of  phantasy,  by  which 
the  first  naive   answer  is   given   to  the  questions  of 


GOD  AS  THE  END  OF  KNOWLEDGE.        157 

the  immature  intelligence.  And  a  still  longer  pro- 
cess is  necessary  before  such  imaginative  solutions 
of  imperfectly  conceived  problems  can  give  place  to 
definite  canons  of  scientific  method,  and  definite 
efforts  of  philosophic  refiexion,  to  grasp  the  idtimate 
truths  of  reason.  Yet  every  step  toward  the  con- 
ception of  the  world  or  of  any  part  of  it  as  a 
system,  every  step  toward  the  comprehension  of  the 
unity  of  the  intelligence  in  all  the  variety  of  its 
activities,  every  step  toward  a  rational  view  of  the 
relation  between  the  intelligence  and  the  intelligible 
world,  is  a  step  toward  the  verification  and,  in  an 
etymological  sense,  the  demonstration  of  the  principles 
of  unity  presupposed  in  the  whole  process.  The 
process  of  knowledge  is  therefore,  as  has  been  said, 
at  once  a  progressive  and  a  regressive  process.  It  is 
an  advance  towards  a  completer  synthesis  of  the  ever 
increasing  multiplicity  of  phenomena  which  are  pre- 
sented to  us  in  experience,  and  at  the  same  time  it 
is  a  new  return  upon  the  principle  or  principles  of 
unity  which  are  presupposed  even  in  the  simplest 
perception  of  these  phenomena.  Thus  every  move- 
ment of  scientific  or  philosophic  synthesis,  as  it  is 
the  reduction  of  a  manifold  to  a  simple  form,  is 
the  recovery  of  the  unity  of  the  intelligence  out  of  the 
dispersion  of  facts ;  and  it  is  therefore  a  practical 
verification  of  the  presumption  of  unity  involved  in 
our  first  apprehension  of  them.      In  advancing  towards 


158  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RELIGION. 

a  completer  view  of  things,  in  bringing  more  and  more 
of  the  facts  of  the  universe  within  his  thought,  man  is 
not,  so  to  speak,  losing  himself  in  the  object,  or  taking 
into  his  mind  an  alien  matter :  he  is  only  providing 
the  appropriate  nutriment  for  his  growing  intelligence. 
For  the  facts  which  he  appropriates  in  know- 
ledge are  by  the  same  process  transmuted  into  the 
substance  of  the  mind  that  grasps  them,  and  so 
become  tlie  means  to  the  development  of  the  ideas 
which  constitute  it  as  a  mind.  Thus  all  experience  is  ' 
a  process  by  which  we  discover  what  is  really  meant 
in,  or  implied  by,  the  consciousness  of  the  world, 
of  self,  and  of  God — the  three  ideas  which,  in  their 
unity  and  difference,  form  the  circle  within  which  our 
spiritual  life  always  revolves. 
7^  A  farther  light  may  be  cast  on  this  subject,  if  we 
bring  it  into  connexion  with  a  familiar  controversy 
in  relation  to  the  first  principles  of  knowledge.  Mr. 
Spencer's  assertion  that  the  absolute  or  infinite  is  un- 
knowable, though  the  idea  of  it  is  presupposed  in  all 
other  knowledge,  may  remind  us  of  the  old  argument 
of  the  sceptics  that  the  principles  of  knowledge  must 
be  matters  of  faith,  because  we  cannot  go  beyond  them 
or  explain  them  by  anything  else.  We  cannot,  it  was 
argued,  hnow  the  principles  of  knowledge,  as  we  know"^ 
other  things  by  their  means.  We  explain  facts  by 
tracing  them  to  other  facts  as  their  causes,  but  how 
can  we  ask  for  any  cause  for  the  principle  of  causality 


GOD  AS  THE  END  OE  KNOWLEDGE.        159 

itself  ?  We  can  say  that  there  must  be  a  reason  for 
any  consequent,  but  how  can  we  speak  of  a  reason  for 
our  requirement  of  reasons  ?  The  effort  to  prove  the 
principles  of  knowledge  seems  necessarily  to  involve  a  "^ 
petitio  principii.  Hence  it  is  not  unnaturally  main- 
tained that  these  principles  are  unknowable,  and  that 
the  intelligence,  which  in  all  its  action  is  guided  by 
them,  can  never  turn  upon  them  or  seek  for  any 
evidence  for  their  truth. 

Now  there  is  an  answer  which  has  been  sometimes 
given  to  this  objection,  and  which  is  good  so  far  as  it 
goes,  but  not,  I  think,  quite  satisfactory.  It  may  be 
said — it  is  already  said  by  Aristotle — that  the  prin- 
ciples of  knowledge  cannot  be  less  truly  known  than 
what  we  apprehend  by  means  of  them.  The  old  lady 
who,  being  afraid  that  an  insecure  bridge  would  break 
down  under  her,  got  herself  carried  over  in  a  sedan 
chair,  might  give  a  lesson  to  those  who  think  that 
what  is  known  through  a  principle  can  be  better 
known  than  the  principle  itself.  The  principles  of) 
knowledge  are  not  like  the  tortoise  which  supports; 
the  world,  but  which  requires  something  else  to  sup-(  / 
port  itself.  For  there  is  no  space  beneath  them  into 
which  anything  could  fall.  By  the  very  nature  of  the 
case  they  are  the  boundaries  of  the  intelligible  uni- 
verse. If  we  cannot  know  them,  it  is  only  in  the 
sense  in  which  we  cannot  see  light,  because  there  is 
nothing  else  than  light  to   see  it  by.       If  Diogenes 


IGO  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RELIGION. 

used  a  lamp  at  noon-day,  at  least  it  was  not  to  seek 
for  the  sun.  The  proof  of  the  principles  of  knowledge 
can  only  be  what  Kant  called  a  "  transcendental  de- 
duction," i.e.  it  can  only  be  a  regressive  argument 
which  shows  that  every  other  truth  depends  upon 
them,  and  must  be  proved  by  means  of  them.  All 
experience  goes  on  the  assumption  of  them,  whether 
that  assumption  be  made  consciously  or  unconsciously; 
and,  if  tluy  are  not  true,  there  is  nothing  true.  No 
argument  from  fact  can  possibly  be  brought  against 
that  on  which  all  facts  rest.  But  as  little  can  a  direct 
argument  for  them  be  based  on  any  fact.  The  sceptic 
is  to  be  refuted  only  by  showing  that  there  is  no  place 
left  on  which  he  can  erect  his  batteries. 

This  reply  is  good  so  far  as  it  goes ;  but  it  is  not 
quite  satisfactory.  For  it  would  naturally  lead  to  a 
conception  of  the  process  of  knowledge  as  twofold  in 
character ;  as  consisting,  on  the  one  hand,  in  a  process 
of  reasoning  hacli  to  certain  principles,  and,  on  the 
other  hand,  in  a  process  of  using  these  principles  to 
connect  facts,  and  so  reasoning  forward  by  means  of 
them  to  new  results.  On  this  view  the  method  of 
philosophy,  which  seeks  to  establish  first  principles, 
would  be  essentially  different  from  the  method  of 
science,  which  seeks,  on  the  basis  of  these  principles, 
to  determine  the  relations  of  phenomena  to  each 
other.  Knowledge  would  be  imaged  to  us  as  a 
line    with    a    fixed    bednninfj    and    no    end.      Before 


GOD  AS  THE  END  OF  KNOWLEDGE.       161 

us  would  lie  an  infinite  series  of  results  which 
we  might  go  on  gradually  bringing  within  the  sphere 
of  our  knowledge,  but  behind  us  would  lie  only 
certain  simple  principles,  and  perhaps  finally  only  one 
principle,  of  which  we  could  learn  nothing  more  after 
we  had  once  apprehended  its  meaning.  Now  this  idea 
of  knowledge  is,  I  think,  based  on  a  false  analogy. 
For  every  increase  in  our  knowledge,  at  the  same  time 
that  it  opens  to  us  a  new  prospect,  and  brings  within 
our  view  a  new  field  of  experience,  also  throws  new 
light  upon  the  meaning  of  the  first  principles  on  which 
science  is  based.  Aspice,  rcspice,  2^'^'os2nce.  Every 
advance  in  scientific  knowledge,  while  it  involves  a 
new  comprehension  of  the  facts  present  to  us  in  our 
experience,  involves  also,  as  has  often  been  remarked, 
a  prophecy  of  the  future.  But,  moreover  —  what 
has  been  less  often  considered — it  involves  a  retro- 
spect, or  as  Plato  called  it  a  reminiscence,  of  some- 
thing that  has  been  from  the  beginning.  This 
reminiscence  is,  however,  no  mere  recollection ;  for 
it  enables  us  to  see  the  meaning  of  the  past  in  a 
way  we  did  not  see  it  while  we  were  in  it ;  in  other 
words,  it  supplies  us  with  a  new  interpretation  of  the 
principles  on  which  we  have  all  along  been  proceeding. 
Hence  the  true  image  of  our  growing  knowledge  of 
the  world  and  of  ourselves  is  to  be  found  in  the 
development  of  a  germ,  which  shows  what  is  in 
itself    the  more  fully  and  clearly  the   more  material 

VOL.  I.  L 


lt)2  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RELIGION. 

it  assimilates  from  the  outward  world,  and  which, 
while  adapting  itself  to  its  environment,  is  continually 
increasing  the  sphere  of  its  own  life.  What  is  implied 
in  an  advance  of  science  is  not  merely  that  we  derive 
new  conclusions  from  old  premises,  or  that  we  reduce 
new  facts  under  the  same  old  principles,  but  that  we 
come  to  see  the  old  principles  themselves  under  a  new 
aspect,  just  because  we  go  back  upon  them  from  a 
widened  view  of  the  world.  Why  do  we  count  a 
knowledge  of  the  particular  laws  of  nature  higher  and 
more  valuable  than  a  knowledge  of  the  facts  that  fall 
under  them  ?  It  is  not  only  because  it  gives  us  a  clearer 
apprehension  of  these  facts  and  a  greater  command 
over  them,  but  also  because  these  laws  stand  nearer 
to  the  highest  principles  of  our  thought,  and  throw 
a  more  direct  light  upon  them.  Thus,  all  the  know- 
ledge of  particular  causes  which  we  acquire,  is  a^ 
contribution  towards  a  better  knowledge  of  the 
principle  of  causality,  and  of  its  place  in  relation 
to  other  principles  as  an  explanation  of  reality ; 
and  ultimately  every  discovery  of  a  special  law  of 
causation  has  its  main  value  in  throwing  light  on  this 
higher  problem.  For,  indeed,  the  settlement  of  this 
problem  means  nothing  less  than  the  determination  of 
the  limit,  if  there  be  a  limit,  to  the  mechanical  view 
of  the  world. 

This  truth,  i.e.  that  the  highest  end  of  a  science  is 
I  the   developed    knowledge    of   its    principle,    may    be 


GOD  AS  THE  END  OF  KNOWLEDGE.       163 

further  illustrated  by  reference  to  the  science  of  ethics. 
For,  as  Socrates  showed,  there  are  certain  primary 
conceptions  involved  in  all  our  moral  judgments ;  and 
these  conceptions  when  analysed  resolve  themselves 
into  different  aspects  of  the  idea  of  a  siLmmum  honum 
or  highest  end,  for  which  all  rational  beings  exist  and 
act.  Now  all  our  effort  to  comprehend  the  facts  of  the 
moral  life  is  useful  mainly  as  it  helps  us  to  develop 
this  idea,  and  to  bring  to  a  clearer  consciousness  all 
the  elements  that  are  contained  in  it.  Thus,  the 
science  of  morals  returns  upon  the  principle  which  is 
involved  in  the  moral  consciousness,  and  its  highest 
value  is  just  that  it  enables  us  to  define  that  principle. 
Its  advance  is  a  cyclical  movement,  which  yet  is  not  a 
circulus  vitiosus,  because  the  circle  is  a  complete  one, 
that  does  not  leave  outside  of  it  any  fact  with  which 
morals  is  concerned ;  but  a  mind  that  has  consciously 
traversed  the  circle  stands  in  an  entirely  new  attitude 
to  the  principle,  and  may  be  said  to  possess  it  in 
quite  a  different  sense  from  one  that  has  not  done  so. 
Although,  therefore,  the  process  proves  nothing  outside 
of  itself,  yet  it  is  a  real  development  of  thought ;  and 
this,  of  itself,  is  the  highest  kind  of  proof  of  the 
principle  in  which  the  development  begins  and  ends. 

Now  this  truth  has  its  highest  application  in  rela- 
tion to  the  idea  of  God,  as  the  principle  of  unity  in  all 
consciousness ;  especially  if  we  consider  that  idea  in 
connexion  with  the  subordinate  ideas  of  self  and  not- 


164  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RELIGION. 

self,  which  constitute  its  primary  difference.  In  one 
sense,  the  boundaries  of  knowledge  remain  always  the 
same;  for  the  identity  of  the  self,  the  manifoldness 
of  the  world,  and  the  principle  of  unity-in-difference 
which  manifests  itself  in  both — these  three  ideas,  in 
their  opposition  to,  and  their  connexion  with  each 
other — form  a  circle  from  which  thought  can  never 
escape.  But,  in  another  sense,  each  and  all  of  these 
ideas  are  new  in  every  age,  not  only  because  new 
material  is  continually  being  brought  within  the  circle  \ 
so  described,  but  because  the  assimilation  of  that  ma- 
terial is  at  the  same  time  the  process  by  which  the 
nature  of  the  circle  becomes  manifested,  and  its  bound- 
aries even  more  clearly  defined.  Thus  the  permanence 
of  the  three  great  limiting  ideas  by  which  our  whole 
life,  theoretical  and  practical,  is  governed,  does  not  ex- 
clude the  vicissitudes  of  a  long  process  of  development, 
in  which  each  of  them  takes  into  itself  the  most  varied 
content,  and  becomes  in  a  sense  transformed  by  assimi- 
lating it.  But  the  transformation  is  always  organic, 
always  held  within  the  limits  of  the  identity  of  one 
life  ;  and  its  last  result  is  therefore  only  a  more  ade- 
quate consciousness  of  the  meaning  and  relative  value 
of  the  ideas  by  which  it  was  guided  and  stimulated  in 
all  its  progress.  Thus  what,  in  one  point  of  view,  are 
the  starting  points  and  first  presuppositions  of  know- 
ledge, are  in  another  point  of  view  to  be  regarded  as  the 
ultimate  truths  in  which  the  whole  j^rocess  of  knowing 


GOD  AS  THE  END  OF  KNOWLEDGE.        165 

finds  its  terminus.  We  cannot  say  a  single  rational 
word  without  expressing  or  implying  a  principle  of 
unity  which  manifests  itself  in  and  through  the  difference 
of  self  and  the  world  ;  and  the  utmost  goal  of  all  our 
knowledge,  nay,  we  may  say  of  our  whole  rational  life, 
is  to  discover  what  is  contained  in  that  principle. 
Self,  Not-self,  God — these  three  ideas — mark  out  the 
sphere  within  which  the  movement  of  our  spirits  is 
confined ;  and  all  that  we  can  attain  by  the  utmost 
effort  of  our  spirits  is  to  realise  a  little  more  clearly 
what  we  mean  by  the  Self,  by  the  Not-self,  and  by 
God. 

The  general  result  of  what  has  just  been  said 
is  that  the  process  of  knowledge  is  not  the  mechanical 
building  up  of  a  structure  upon  foundations  that 
are  once  for  all  fixed  and  secure,  but  that  it  is  the 
development  of  a  germ  which  never  adds  anything 
to  itself  without  transubstantiating  it  or  changing 
it  into  its  own  form;  and  which  turns  the  outward 
conditions  of  its  environment,  even  those  that  seem  at 
first  to  be  most  unfavourable,  into  an  opportunity  for 
the  exercise  of  its  own  powers,  and  the  expression  of  its 
own  life.  But  such  development  involves  a  continual 
new  return  upon  itself,  upon  the  principle  of  unity 
that  was  hid  in  the  germ,  so  that  in  all  its  expansion 
it  may  be  said  to  be  only  becoming  more  truly  itself. 

Now  what  is  the  germ  in  this  case,  in  the  case  of 
the  conscious  or  rational  life  of  man  ?      It  is  obviously 


-[66  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RELIGION. 

nothing  else  than  the  principle  of  unity  which  shows 
itself  in  the  opposition  and  connexion  in  all  the  conflict 
and  reconciliation  of  self  and  not-self ;  and  that,  as 
)[■  we  have  seen,  is  just  what  is  implied  in  the  idea  of 
God.     Of  course,  as  I  have  already  repeated  more  than 
once,  it  is  not  meant  that  all  religion,  or  indeed  any 
religion  which   is   not   reflective,  is    clearly    or   fully  ' 
conscious   of  this.     The   meaning    is    that   it    is    the 
presence   of  this   unity   in    all   our    consciousness    of 
objects  and  of  ourselves,  which  continually  lifts  men 
above   the   finite,  or  forces    them   to   seek   for   some- 
thing stronger,  higher,  better,   something   which  con- 
trasts with  immediate  reality  and  is  regarded  as  more 
real  than  it.     It  is  only  the  presence  of  the  unity,  the 
totality,  the  infinite,  in  man's  consciousness  that  can 
awaken  even  a  suspicion  of  the  imperfect,  the  limited, 
the  partial  character  of  his  finite  existence.       But  if 
this    infinite,  as   Mr.    Spencer    rightly   holds,    is    the 
beginning    of    consciousness,    the    presupposition     of 
everything  else,  if  it  is  for  us  the  first  principle  of  all 
knowing  and  being,  then,  by  the  very  nature  of  the 
case,  it  must  be  also  the  last  principle  of  which  all 
our  existence  and  all   the  existence  of  the  world  to 
which  we  belong,  is  the  manifestation,  and   of  which 
all  our  thought  and  science  is  the  interpretation.      In 
this  sense  it  is  no  mere  pious  metaphor,  but  a  simple 
•^    expression  of  the  facts   to   say,  that  all  our  life  is  a 
journey  from  God  to  God,  and  that  in  Him  we  live 


GOD  AS  THE  END  OF  KNOWLEDGE.        1G7 

and  move  and  have  our  being.  All  our  secular  con- 
sciousness can  only  be  the  explication  or,  if  we  prefer 
the  Spencerian  word,  the  differentiation,  of  the  primi- 
tive unity  presupposed  alike  in  consciousness  and  self- 
consciousness,  and  all  that  it  can  achieve  by  its 
activity  is,  so  to  speak,  to  furnish  materials  for  the 
religious  consciousness.  In  other  words,  the  results 
of  the  process  must  be  ultimately  reinterpreted  in  the 
light  of  the  unity  which  they  presuppose ;  and  they 
cannot  but  remain  imperfect  and  abstract  till  they 
have  received  this  reinterpretation.  Let  us  state  as 
broadly  as  we  please  the  facts  of  man's  ignorance,  his 
error,  or  his  sin ;  let  us  darken  as  we  please  the  pic- 1 
ture  of  his  thoughtlessness,  his  immersion  in  the  finite, 
his  sensuality  that  enslaves  him  to  the  world,  his 
vanity  that  shuts  him  up  in  himself — and  we  cannot 
easily  exaggerate  any  one  of  these  things — yet  it  is  not 
for  a  moment  to  be  supposed  that  he  can  escape  from 
God,  or  cease  to  live  in  Him.  How  the  divine  unity 
can  be  consistent  with  the  free  play  of  the  life  of  man 
may  be  a  hard  problem,  but  in  our  anxiety  about  its 
solution,  let  us  not  forget  the  conditions  of  the  pro- 
blem itself.  Man  is  free,  in  so  far  as  he  is  free,  just 
because  he  partakes  of  the  divine  nature,  i.e.  because 
he  cannot  be  conscious  of  himself  except  in  relation  to 
God ;  and  if  he  could  cut  the  bond  of  union,  neither 
the  consciousness  nor  the  problem  of  freedom  could 
exist  for  him  at  all.     To  see  all  things  in  God  is  thus 


168  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RELIGION. 

not  the  pious  dream  of  an  idealist  philosophy.  In 
what  other  light  could  we  see  them,  but  either  that  of 
the  unity  which  is  the  light  of  all  our  seeing,  or  of 
some  principle  which  is  a  secondary  consequence  of 
that  unity  ?  To  act  with  God  as  our  end  may  seem 
to  be  a  rare  and  exceptional  thing,  but  in  so  far  as  He 
is  the  end  which  is  beyond  all  other  ends,  and  in  so 
far  as  the  satisfaction  of  the  self  that  is  within  us  can 
only  be  found  in  the  attainment  of  this  absolute  end, 
we  may  fairly  say  that  all  action  is  ultimately  a  seek- 
ing for  God.  As  Plato  said,  there  is  no  man  who 
does  not  desire  the  good,  and  is  not  unwillingly 
deprived  of  it.  As  St.  Augustine  said  :  "  Thou  hast 
made  us  for  Thyself,  and  our  souls  are  ever  restless 
till  they  rest  in  Thee." 


LECTUEE    SEVENTH. 

THE    MAIN    STAGES    IN    THE    EVOLUTION    OF    RELIGION. 

Anali/sis  of  the  Idea  of  Evolution — How  the  Ideas  of  Identity 
and  Difference,  Permanence  and  Change,  are  combined  in  it — 
Two  Questions  as  to  the  Method  of  Evolution:  (1)  How  the 
Religious  Consciousness  Develops  out  of  the  Consciousness 
of  the  Finite — Priority  of  the  Objective  to  the  Subjective 
Consciothsness,  and  of  both  to  the  Consciousness  of  God — Hoiv 
far  the  Different  Forms  of  Consciousness  are  Separable  or 
reciprocally  Exclusive — Criticism  of  Goethe's  View  of  this 
Question — (2)  What  are  the  Stages  in  the  Development  of 
the  Religious  Consciousness  itself —  What  is  meant  by  Objec- 
tive, Subjective,  and  Absolute  or  Universal  Religion. 

The  last  lecture  has  brought  us  to  an  important 
turning  point  in  our  argument.  According  to  the 
definition  previously  given,  the  idea  of  God  in  its 
purest  germinal  form — the  form  which  is  at  the  root 
of  all  the  other  forms  of  it — is  the  idea  of  the  mii 
presupposed  in  all  the  differences  of  the  finite,  espe- 
cially the  difference  of  self  and  not-self,  of  inner  and 
outer  experience.  But  if  this  be  assumed,  we  are 
necessarily  led  to  regard  that  idea,  not  only  as  the 
beginning  or  first  presupposition,  but  also  as  the  end 


170  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RELIGION. 

or  last  interpretation  of  our  lives.  It  cannot  be  one 
of  these  without  being  the  other.  The  first  principle 
which  is  involved  in  all  our  consciousness  of  things 
and  of  ourselves,  must  needs  also  be  that  in  the  know- 
ledge of  which  all  our  other  knowledge  culminates. 
If  all  our  divided  consciousness  of  the  finite  be  only 
the  differentiation  of  the  primal  unity  of  the  infinite, 
then  it  is  obvious  that  we  cannot  fully  understand 
the  finite  till  we  have  carried  it  back  to  that  unity 
again.  As  our  life  is  organic,  so  our  knowledge  is 
not  to  be  represented  as  an  edifice  built  on  definite 
foundations,  which  remain  beneath  it  and  support  it 
but  are  not  visible  in  its  structure,  Eather  we  must 
regard  it  as  the  development  of  a  germinal  principle, 
which  is  continually  revealing  itself  more  fully  in  all 
that  arises  out  of  it,  and  which  therefore  finds  in  its 
own  results  at  once  its  evidence  and  its  definition. 
We  cannot  understand  the  life  of  reason  in  us  except 
as  a  process  in  which  every  step  throws  new  light  not 
only  on  the  objects  of  the  intelligible  world,  but  also 
upon  the  intelligence  that  knows  it,  and  so  upon  the 
principle  of  unity  that  manifests  itself  in  both.  Un- 
less in  this  sense  God  is  knowable,  nothing  can  be 
knowable.  If,  therefore,  we  admit  that  we  cannot 
know  God,  it  can  only  be  in  the  sense  that  the  con- 
sciousness of  Him  is  gradually  realising  itself  in  our 
progressive  intelligence,  and  that  the  process  whereby 
we  come   to   see    things   in   their   relation  to  God  is 


STA  GES  IN  THA  T  E  VOL  UTION.  171 

never  complete.  In  religion  our  '  highest  faith '  and 
our  '  deepest  doubt '  meet  together,  not  because  the 
idea  of  God  is  empty,  but  because  in  it  are  concen- 
trated all  the  problems  of  our  life ;  but  for  that  very 
reason  it  is  only  in  it  that  they  can  meet  with  a  final 
solution. 

If,  however,  we  adopt  this  view  as  to  the  nature  of 
religion  and  its  relation  to  the  other  elements  of  our 
consciousness,  we  are  immediately  brought  face  to  face 
with  another  problem.  We  have  to  ask  what  is  the 
lato  or  method  of  the  development  of  religion.  As  a 
preparation  for  the  solution  of  this  problem,  however, 
it  is  necessary  in  the  first  place  to  call  attention  to 
some  elements  in  the  idea  of  development  to  which  we 
have  not  as  yet  referred.  Development  is  a  process 
which  it  is  difficult  to  describe  in  logically  consistent 
language,  because  in  it  difference  and  unity  interpene- 
trate each  other  so  closely  and  inextricably.  Look  at  it 
in  one  way,  and  we  might  say  that  a  developing  being 

I  never  changes.  He  is  the  same  from  the  beginning  to 
the  end  of  the  process  of  his  life ;  for  all  his  changes 
are  conceived  as  the  farther  manifestation  of  his  identity, 
and  he  can  admit  into  his  being  no  element  which  is  not 
in  some  way  brought  under  that  identity.  Look  at  it  in 
another  way,  and  we  might  say  that  his  existence  is 

,  all  change,  and  even  that  his  changes  are  so  complete 
that  there  is  nothing  in  him  which  remains  unaltered. 
For  such  a  being  is  an  organism  ;  and  just  so  far  as 


■+ 


172  THE  E  VOL  UTION  OF  RELIGION. 

he  is  so,  the  change  of  any  element  in  his  being  neces- 
sarily involves  the  correlative  change  of  all  the  other 
elements.  Like  Wordsworth's  cloud,  he  "  moveth 
altogether  if  he  move  at  all."  Hence,  of  his  changes 
we  might  say  that,  more  than  any  other  kinds  of 
change,    they    are    revolutions,    transitions    in    which 

V      "  old  things  pass  away  and  all  things  are  made  new." 

The  explanation  of  this  verbal  contradiction  is,  how- 

'     ever,  not  far  to  seek.      It   lies  just   in  this  that  the 

:     attempt  to  bring  the  facts  of  development  under  such 

-=_.  inadequate  categories  as  those  of  bare  permanence  or 
bare  change,  necessarily  leads  to  a  kind  of  dissection 
f  of  the  idea,  which  is  its  destruction.  The  alteration 
which  is  involved  in  development,  is  not  a  superficial 
change  in  the  qualities  of  some  permanent  substratum 
which  remains  substantially  unaltered  beneath  it: 
nor  is  the  identity  which  is  preserved  through  change 
merely  a  capacity  for  the  reproduction  of  the  same 
quality  (in  a  thing  which  meantime  has  shown  other 
qualities)  so  soon  as  the  original  conditions  are  re- 
stored. Development  is  a  process  in  which  identity 
manifests  itself  just  in  change,  and  returns  upon  itself 
just  hy  means  of  change.  It  is,  in  the  language  often 
used  by  Mr.  Spencer,  a  process  of  differentiation  and 
integration,  i.e.  it  is  a  movement  into  difference  from 
a  unity  which  is  never  lost  in  that  difference,  but 
which  holds  its  elements  together  even  in  their 
extremest   antagonism,    and    which    therefore    in    the 


S TA  GES  IN  THA  T  E  VOL  UTION.  1 73 

end  restores  itself  in  a  higher  form  just  by  means 
of  that  antagonism.  Expressed  in  the  set  meta- 
physical terms  of  Hegel,  what  any  life  or  process 
of  development  shows  us  is  a  Universal  which 
manifests  itself  in  the  opposition  and  relation  of 
particulars,  and  which  just  through  that  opposition 
and  relation,  realises  itself  as  an  individual  whole. 
This  idea  has  sometimes  been  thought  a  very  mys- 
terious one,  because,  though  we  are  familiar  enough 
with  illustrations  of  it,  exact  analysis  betrays  in  it  a 
complexity  which  we  do  not  ordinarily  recognise  in 
those  illustrations.  Hence  we  are  tempted  to  get  rid 
of  the  difficulty  by  reducing  development  to  some 
idea  that  is  simpler  and  easier  to  grasp.  But,  if  we 
insist  on  explaining  development  by  no  higher  category 
than  that  of  physical  causation,  or  by  the  external 
action  and  reaction  of  independent  substances,  it  will 
necessarily  become  mysterious ;  for  such  explanations 
will  always  leave  an  unexplained  residuum,  an  element 
which  escapes  from  the  grasp  of  our  method,  and 
presents  itself  at  the  end  as  a  problem  with  which  it 
cannot  deal. 

Yet,  in  one  sense,  the  idea  of  development  is  of  all 
ideas  that  which  ought  to  be  most  intelligible,  illustrated 
as  it  is  by  the  very  nature  of  our  intelligence,  and  by 
the  whole  course  of  its  life.  For,  while  self-consciousness 
is  in  one  way  the  very  simplest  thing  we  know,  the  very 
type  of  simplicity  and  transparent  self-identity,  and  we 


174  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RELIGION. 

could  scarcely  find  any  better  word  to  express  clear- 
ness of  evidence  than  to  say,  "  This  is  as  certain  and 
evident  to  me  as  that  I  am  I " ;  yet  in  this  apparently 
simple  vuiity,  the  diversity  of  all  the  mighty  world  is 
mirrored.  In  the  consciousness  of  self  we  have  subject 
and  object  as  essentially  diverse,  and  yet  essentially 
identical,  and  every  movement  of  the  life  of  a  self- 
conscious  being  is  a  movement  out  into  what  seems  an 
irreconcilable  difference,  and  back  into  unity  again. 
The  theoretical  and  practical  life  of  this  apparently 
simple  unit  is  one  in  which  it  continually  goes  out  of 
itself  to  that  which  is  most  opposed  to  it;  yet  in  all  its 
travels  it  never  meets  with  anything  from  which  it 
cannot  return  to  itself;  it  never  wanders  so  far  that  it 
is  not  with  a  moment's  self-recollection  at  home.  And 
all  that  it  finds  in  its  wanderings  it  can  make  part  of 
itself,  and  weave  into  the  web  of  its  own  life.  If, 
therefore,  the  idea  of  organic  development  seems,  when 
we  analyse  it,  to  be  very  complex ;  if  it  even,  on 
the  first  view  of  it,  appears  to  contain  an  insoluble 
contradiction,  this  is  not  because  it  is  something  far 
from  us,  but  rather  for  the  opposite  reason,  that 
the  greatest  of  all  illustrations  of  it  is  so  near  to 
us  that  its  complexity  is  hidden  from  us,  and  its  unity 
is  apt  to  be  regarded  as  mere  self-identity.  The  inner 
life  of  the  intelligence  is  like  a  sea  whose  trans- 
parency hides  from  us  its  depth.  Hence  we  are  more 
apt  to  recognise    the  full  bearing  of  the  idea  of  de- 


STAGES  IN  THAT  EVOLUTION.  175 

velopment  in  less  adequate  but  more  palpable  illustra- 
tions of  it.  Thus,  e.g.  we  are  familiar  with  the  fact 
of  history  that  the  most  highly  developed  civilisation 
is  that  in  which  there  is  the  greatest  division  of 
labour,  and  at  the  same  time  the  greatest  unity  and 
co-operation  ;  and  it  is  not  difficult  to  see  that  one 
of  these  could  not  exist  without  the  other.  We  are 
also  familiar  with  the  fact  that  the  highest  animal 
is  that  which  has  the  greatest  variety  of  organs,  and 
passes  through  the  greatest  variety  of  changes,  and 
which,  nevertheless,  through  all  this  difference  and 
change  remains  one  with  itself,  so  that  its  whole  life  is 
the  expression  of  one  jDrinciple.  And,  if  we  recognise 
man  as  higher  than  any  other  animal,  it  is  because,  by 
the  variety  of  his  perceptions  and  of  the  powers  of  his 
intelligence,  he  has  the  most  extensive  and  manifold 
experience  of  the  world,  while  yet  the  unity  of  his 
consciousness  is  able  to  reduce  all  this  experience  into 
the  continuity  of  one  life.  In  each  of  these  cases, 
therefore,  we  are  able  clearly  to  see  that  development 
is  a  process  at  once  of  differentiation  and  integration, 
i.e.  that  it  is  a  process  in  which  difference  continually 
increases,  not  at  the  expense  of  unity,  but  in  such 
a  way  that  the  unity  also  is  deepened. 

Now,  when  we  attempt  to  use  the  idea  of  develop- 
ment, in  the  sense  in  which  we  have  analysed  it, 
as  a  key  to  the  history  of  religion,  we  find  that  the 
problem   we   have   to   solve   takes   two   forms,   which 


176  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RELIGION. 

we  cannot  entirely  separate,  but  which  it  is  necessary 
to  distinguish.  In  thejIrsZ  place,  we  have  to  ask  how 
the  religious  consciousness  develops  out  of  the  con- 
sciousness of  the  finite  or  in  connection  with  it.  And 
in  the  second  place,  we  have  to  ask  how  the  religious 
consciousness  itself  advances  from  one  form  to  another, 
from  the  lowest  awe  of  the  supernatural  which  we  can 
call  a  religion,  to  the  highest  form  of  Christian  faith. 

I  shall  begin  with  the  first  of  these  questions. 
It  is  obvious  that  in  the  different  elements  of  our 
consciousness  there  is  a  certain  07rle7'  of  iwiority. 
"  What  is  first  in  nature,"  as  Aristotle  said,  "  comes 
last  in  genesis."  The  unity  which  underlies  our 
divided  consciousness  of  the  object  and  of  the  self  is 
involved  in  all  that  we  think  and  all  that  we  do :  in 
the  theoretical  process  by  which  we  seek  to  know  the 
world,  and  in  the  practical  process,  by  which  we 
endeavour  to  carry  our  ideals  into  reality  in  the 
world.  But  this  unity,  just  because  it  is  the  first 
presupposition  of  all  our  consciousness,  is  the  last 
thing  we  know.  We  rise  to  the  infinite  from  the 
finite,  just  because  the  infinite  is  naturally  prior  to 
the  finite,  and  the  last  thing  thought  does  is  to  turn 
back  on  its  first  principle.  In  a  similar  way,  the 
consciousness  of  the  svibject  underlies  the  conscious- 
ness of  the  object,  but  we  come  to  know  it  last.  Just 
because  the  object  presupposes  the  subject,  it  is  from 
the  object  that  the  subject  returns  upon  itself;  and 


ST  A  GES  IN  THA  T  E  VOL  UTION.  177 

the  theoretical  apprehension  of  the  world  goes  before 
the  practical  reaction  by  which  we  seek  to  realise 
ourselves  in  it.  The  general  order  of  the  elements  of 
our  consciousness  is,  therefore,  the  following.  The 
consciousness  of  objects  is  prior  in  time  to  self- 
consciousness,  and  the  consciousness  of  both  subject 
and  object  is  prior  to  the  consciousness  of  God. 

But  this  time-priority  must  not  be  taken  to  mean 
that  there  are  three  processes  in  our  life  which  follow 
in  a  certain  order,  so  that  the  one  must  be  completed 
before  the  other  begins.  Such  a  view  is  obviously 
contradicted  by  facts.  We  do  not  begin  to  act  after 
we  have  finished  knowing,  nor  do  we  begin  to  be 
religious  after  the  highest  form  of  morality  has  been 
achieved.  All  these  forms  of  consciousness — theoret- 
ical, practical,  and  religious — exist  together,  and  we 
seem  to  find  them  all  existing  together  from  the  very 
dawn  of  human  life,  or,  at  least,  from  the  earliest  period 
in  the  history  of  the  individual  and  the  race  in  which 
we  can  find  distinct  evidence  of  the  existence  of 
any  one  of  them.  The  priority  is  not  like  that  of 
bud,  flower,  and  fruit,  in  which  the  later  supplants 
the  earlier.  The  exclusive  occupation  of  consciousness 
by  one  of  its  forms  is  only  apparent.  It  has,  indeed, 
been  noticed  that  the  child  at  first  prefers  to  speak  of 
himself  in  an  objective  way,  as  if  he  were  conscious  of 
himself  only  as  he  is  conscious  of  other  objects :  and 
the  philosopher  Fichte  is  said  to  have  made  a  feast  to 

VOL.    I.  M 


178  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RELIGION. 

celebrate  the  moment  in  which  his  child  first  said  "  I ;" 
as  if  then  first  the  child  had  distinctly  compassed 
the  act  of  self-consciousness,  and  asserted  his  claim 
to  the  rank  of  an  independent  spiritual  subject.  In 
like  manner,  it  would  not  be  difficult  to  show  that 
there  is  some  interval  between  such  assertion  of  the 
self  against  the  object,  and  any  utterance  of  the  child 
that  gives  distinct  evidence  of  a  feeling  of  reverence 
for  a  being  higher  than  itself.  And  the  same  thing 
holds  good  for  the  childhood  of  the  race^  On  a  rough 
general  view  of  the  facts  of  history,  it  might  seem  that 
in  the  earliest  stages  of  man's  life  on  earth,  he  was 
hardly  to  be  called  self-conscious,  and  he  was  not 
conscious  of  God  at  all.  The  savage,  like  the  boy, 
seems  to  live  almost  entirely  outside  of  himself,  and 
his  passions  appear  to  act  upon  him  like  natural 
forces,  without  his  ever  distinguishing  himself  from 
them,  or  considering  whether  he  shall  yield  to  them  or 
not.  And  when  self-consciousness  begins  to  arise  in 
him,  it  shows  itself  at  first  in  an  unmeasured  self- 
assertion,  which  is  checked  not  by  a  consciousness 
of  law  within,  but  only  by  the  perception,  or  the  fear, 
of  a  greater  power  without  him.  In  other  words, 
he  seems  to  be  incapable  of  rising  above  a  sense 
of  dependence  on  what  is  external,  except  to  indulge 
in  a  self-will  that  respects  nothing.  When  he  breaks 
his  slavery  to  the  object,  it  is  only  to  fall  under  a 
worse  slavery  to  his  own  caprice.      If,  in  some  degree. 


STAGES  IN  THAT  EVOLUTION.  179 

the  case  is  otherwise  with  the  young  who  are  brought 
up  under  the  influences  of  a  civilised  society,  this 
seems  to  be  the  effect  of  an  external  training,  which 
forces  upon  the  individual  at  an  early  age  what  other- 
wise would  not  have  come  to  him  till  a  much  later 
stage  of  his  development.  Hence  the  savage,  who 
never  seems  to  submit  to  limitation  except  from  an 
external  force,  or  to  become  free  except  in  the  way  of 
throwing  off  all  law,  would  fairly  be  taken  as  the  true 
type  of  the  natural  man ;  and,  if  so,  then  it  might 
reasonably  be  said  that  the  natural  man  is  capable  of 
fear  and  of  presumption,  but  never  of  reverence ;  that 
he  can  be  superstitious  or  profane  but  never  religious. 
In  other  words,  he  does  not  really  look  u'p  to  the  power 
before  which  he  trembles,  or,  in  any  sense,  conceive  it 
as  a  better  self,  with  which  he  can  identify  himself 
even  while  he  bends  before  it.  And  this  means  that 
he  does  not  in  the  proper  sense  worship  at  all ;  for  he 
does  not  rise  to  the  idea  of  any  being  who  deserves 
the  name  of  God,  as  being  higher  than  the  self  and 
yet  not  a  mere  object  or  not-self. 

A  striking  expression  of  this  view  of  the  religion  or 
superstition  of  savages  may  be  ^nd  in  Goethe's  Wan- 
derjahre,  where  he  is  speaking  of  the  necessity  of  teach- 
ing religion  to  children.  "  Well-born,  healthy  children," 
he  declares,  "  bring  much  with  them  into  the  world : 
nature  has  given  to  each  of  them  all  that  he  needs  in 
the  struggle  for  existence.    This  it  is  our  duty  to  develop, 


180  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RELIGION. 

though  often  it  develoj)s  itself  better  without  any 
interference.  But  there  is  one  thing  which  no  one 
brings  with  him  into  the  world,  though  it  is  that 
which  is  all-important,  if  he  is  ever  to  show  himself  to 
be  truly  a  man."  What  is  that  ?  It  is  reverence. 
"  No  one  has  it  to  begin  with."  It  may,  indeed,  be 
said  that  "  the  fear  of  uncivilised  races,  excited  by 
overpowering  natural  forces  or  by  mysterious  and 
threatening  events,  has  supplied  the  germ  out  of 
which  a  purer  feeling  has  gradually  arisen."  But 
Goethe  answers  that  there  is  a  distinction  of  kind 
between  such  fear  and  religious  reverence.  "  Though 
fear  is  natural  enough,  rcN'erence  is  not  in  the  same 
sense  natural.  Men  tremble  before  a  mighty  being, 
known  or  unknown.  The  strong  man  seeks  to 
combat,  the  weak  man  to  escape  it :  both  wish  some- 
how to  get  rid  of  it,  and  feel  themselves  fortunate 
if  they  have  succeeded  even  for  a  time  in  putting 
it  aside,  and  have  thus  in  some  measure  recovered 
for  themselves  the  freedom  and  independence  of  their 
nature.  The  natural  man  repeats  this  operation  a 
thousand  times  in  the  course  of  his  life.  From  fear 
he  strives  to  attain  to  freedom,  from  freedom  he  is 
again  driven  back  into  fear,  and  all  this  swaying  from 
one  side  to  another  never  leads  to  any  progress.  To 
fear  is  easy,  though  it  brings  with  it  dispeace :  to 
cherish  reverence  is  hard,  though  it  puts  us  in 
harmony   with  ourselves.      Unwillingly  does  man  de- 


STAGES  IN  THAT  EVOLUTION.  181 

termine  himself  to  reverence,  or,  rather,  he  never  does 
determine  himself  to  it.  It  is  a  higher  sense  which 
must  be  given  to  his  nature,  and  which  is  spontane- 
ously developed  only  by  a  few  specially  favoured 
beings,  who  therefore  have  at  all  times  been  regarded 
as  saints,  or  rather  as  gods." 

To  this,  as  a  popular  description  of  the  facts,  a 
description  only  meant  to  show  their  broader  out- 
lines, there  can  be  no  objection.  But,  if  it  were 
to  be  taken  quite  literally,  in  the  sense  that  man 
ne,ver  learns  reverence,  till  it  is  put  into  him  from 
without  by  some  kind  of  external  discipline,  it  would 
involve  a  division  which  cannot  be  admitted  to 
exist,  between  the  different  stages  of  man's  life  as  a 
conscious  being :  for  it  is  not  possible  that  the  con- 
sciousness of  objects  should  exist  entirely  apart  from 
the  consciousness  of  the  self,  nor  either  entirely  apart 
from  the  consciousness  of  the  unity,  which  is  beyond 
both,  yet  presupposed  in  both.  Hence  also  it  is 
impossible  that  the  feeling  of  dependence  on  objects 
without  us  should  be  absolutely  separated  from  the 
feeling  of  independence  in  relation  to  them ;  or  either 
of  these  feelings  from  the  feeling  of  reverence  for  that 
which  is  above  both  us  and  them.  It  is  undoubtedly 
important  to  make  a  distinction  between  these  different 
feelings  :  nay,  it  may  be  admitted  that  there  are  crises 
in  our  intellectual  and  moral  life,  in  which  we  seem  to 
ourselves  to  exchan-ie  one  of  these  attitudes  of  mind 


182  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RELIGION. 

wholly  and  entirely  for  another.  The  transitions  of 
our  development  by  which  one  element  of  our  con- 
sciousness is  brought  into  prominence  and  another 
sinks  into  the  background,  often  seem  to  us,  at  the 
moment  of  experiencing  them,  to  be  complete  revolu- 
tions of  thought  and  life,  revolutions  in  which  nothing 
in  the  first  stage  has  prepared  us  for  the  last,  and 
nothing  in  the  last  recalls  the  first.  But,  on  closer 
consideration,  we  find  that  such  appearances  are 
illusive.  If  the  soul  of  man  is  not  divided  into 
different  and  independent  compartments,  in  one  of 
which  is  contained  the  consciousness  of  the  object, 
in  another  that  of  the  self,  while  a  third  is  left  for 
the  consciousness  of  God,  neither  can  its  life-history, 
the  life-history  either  of  the  individual  or  of  the  race, 
be  conceived  as  a  process  in  which  external  additions 
are  made  to  what  existed  before,  or  one  kind  of 
consciousness  is  substituted  for  anothei*.  On  the 
contrary,  man's  spiritual  history  is,  in  a  deeper  sense 
than  even  the  growth  of  a  plant  or  an  animal,  a 
di'veloiwicnt.  And  as  we  have  already  indicated,  the 
essential  characteristic  of  development  is  that  nothing 
arises  in  it  de  novo,  which  is  not  in  some  way  pre- 
formed and  anticipated  from  the  beginning.  Growth, 
as  Kant  said,  is  "not  addition  but  intussusception";  it 
is  a  process  in  which  new  elements  are  taken  up  only 
as  they  are  assimilated,  and  in  which,  therefore,  the 
widening   of  the   circle   of  existence   never  ceases  to 


STA  GES  IN  THA  T  E  VOL  UTION.  1,S3 

be  controlled  by  the  self-identical  nature  of  the  being 
whose  life  is  thus  enlarged.  Hence  it  is  only  in  so 
far  as  the  consciousness  of  objects  already  contains 
in  it  implicitly  the  consciousness  of  the  self,  only  so 
far  self-consciousness  is  already  implicitly  the  con- 
sciousness of  God,  that  the  latter  can  develop  out 
of  the  former.  A  clear  analysis  of  the  phases  of  our 
life  which  follow  and  make  room  for  each  other, 
teaches  us  to  recognise  that  the  transition  is  never 
that  revolutionary  change  which,  on  the  first  view  of 
it,  it  seems  to  be.  Even  in  geology  the  catastrophic 
view  of  the  earth's  changes  had  to  be  abandoned ; 
because  closer  examination  showed  that  the  causes 
that  produce  the  greatest  effects  are  those  that  work 
slowly,  silently,  and  gradually.  Still  less  is  it  possible 
to  maintain  a  catastrophic  view  of  the  history  of  man, 
in  view  of  the  organic  identity  that  binds  each  man  to 
himself,  and  the  whole  race  of  men  to  one  another, 
in  all  their  stages  of  development. 

The  bearing  of  this  upon  the  argument  is  obvious. 
Our  immediate  consciousness  of  objects  seems  at  first 
to  be  a  mere  presentment  of  them  to  the  passive 
subject,  to  a  self  that  is  not  in  any  way  occupied 
with  itself,  or  even  conscious  of  itself  at  all.  The  out- 
wardly directed  gaze  seems  simply  to  admit  the  object, 
and  not  to  react,  still  less  to  be  aware  of  itself  as 
reacting,  upon  it.  But,  in  the  first  place,  we  have 
learned  to  recognise  that,  whether  we  are  conscious  of 


184  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RELIGION. 

it  or  not,  there  is  always  a  reaction,  an  analytic  and 
synthetic  activity  of  thought,  even  in  our  simplest  per- 
ceptive consciousness ;  for,  without  this  reaction,  no 
idea  of  any  object  as  distinct  from,  and  related  to, 
other  objects  could  ever  arise  to  trouble  the  self- 
involved  sleep  of  sense.  Apart  from  such  reaction, 
we  might  say  that  the  sensitive  subject  would  remain 
for  ever  confined  to  itself,  were  it  not  that  in  that 
case  there  would  properly  be  no  self  to  be  confined 
to ;  for  where  there  is  no  outward,  there  is,  of  course, 
no  inward  life.  It  is  thus  the  mental  activity  of  the 
subject  that  creates  for  him  a  world  of  objects,  or,  to 
put  it  more  simply,  that  enables  him  to  become 
conscious  of  the  world  of  objects  in  which  he  exists. 
He  cannot  be  an  inhabitant  of  the  intelligible  world, 
unless,  by  the  activity  of  his  own  intelligence,  he 
makes  himself  so.  In  the  second  place,  not  only  is 
the  subject  active  in  perception,  but  he  necessarily 
and  inevitably  has  an  inchoate  consciousness  of  him- 
self as  a  subject,  in  distinction  from  the  subjects 
which  that  activity  enables  him  to  apprehend.  For 
to  apprehend  an  object,  as  such,  is  to  distinguish  it 
from,  and  relate  it  to  the  self  that  is  conscious  of 
it.  It  is  to  refer  an  idea  or  feeling  to  that  which 
is  other  than  the  self,  to  reject  it  from  the  self  and 
to  objectify  it  ;  and  such  a  rejection  or  repulsion 
necessarily  involves,  on  the  other  side,  a  withdrawal 
of  the  self  from  the   object.      The  simplest  outward- 


6- TA  GES  IN  THA  T  E  VOL  UTION.  185 

looking  gaze,  which  seems  to  lose  itself  in  the  object 
to  which  it  is  directed,  yet  recognises  that  object  as 
other  than  itself  or  its  own  state ;  and,  indeed,  all 
its  absorption  in  the  object  may  be  said  to  be  its 
effort  to  heal  the  breach,  of  which,  in  the  very  act  of 
perception,  it  has  become  conscious.  Hence  we  come 
to  the  result  that  even  in  its  utmost  apparent  passivity 
of  perception,  the  mind  is  active;  and  even  in  its 
utmost  absorption  in  the  object,  it  is  conscious  of  the 
self  in  distinction  from  it.  It  is  true  that  the  sub- 
jective aspects  of  the  consciousness  of  objects  are  at 
first  latent,  or  they  are  present  only  in  an  imperfect 
and  inchoate  form.  Attention  is  not  specially  directed 
to  them ;  and  in  any  description  which  the  individual 
would  give  of  his  own  consciousness,  they  would 
generally  be  omitted.  But  they  are  always  there. 
For  it  is  not  possible,  in  the  nature  of  things,  that 
there  should  be  an  object,  except  for  a  subject,  or 
without  that  subject  distinguishing  the  object  from 
itself,  and  itself  froiii  the  object.  In  this  sense  there 
can  be  no  consciousness  of  objects  without  self- 
consciousness.  Even,  therefore,  if  the  word  "  I  "  be 
delayed  for  a  little,  the  inchoate  thought  of  it  cannot 
be  wanting  to  one  who  is  conscious  of  objects  as 
such. 

And  the  same  is  true  of  the  idea  of  God,  as  the 
unity  which  is  presupposed  in  the  division  of  the 
self  from  the   not-self,   and  in  all  other  divisions   of 


186  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RELIGION.      . 

consciousness.  Even  in  the  extremest  opposition  of 
the  subject  to  the  object,  their  unity  cannot  be 
entirely  lost ;  for  every  distinction  is  necessarily  a 
relation,  and  implies  an  identity  within  which  the  differ- 
entiation takes  place.  The  implication  that  there  is 
such  a  unity  may  lie  in  the  background  of  the  mind; 
nevertheless,  it  cannot  but  influence  it  even  from 
the  first.  It  is  the  basis  and  presupposition  of  our 
rational  life,  the  atmosphere  in  which  it  moves,  the 
bond  which  holds  it  together.  A  man  cannot  escape 
its  power  by  not  attending  to  it,  any  more  than  he 
can  escape  being  a  self  by  attending  only  to  objects. 
And,  like  the  idea  of  self,  the  idea  of  God  must  at  a 
very  early  period  take  sonic  form  for  us,  though  it  may 
not  for  long  take  an  adequate  form.  Man  may  hide 
his  inborn  sense  of  the  infinite  in  vague  superstitions 
which  confuse  it  with  the  finite  ;  but  he  cannot  alto- 
gether escape  from  it,  or  prevent  his  consciousness  of 
the  finite  from  being  disturbed  by  it. 

The  progress  of  consciousness  is  thus  the  explica- 
tion of  a  confused  totality  in  which  the  three  factors 
are  at  first  merged  and  mingled,  but  it  is  never  the 
sudden  emergence  of  any  quite  new  factor.  For, 
though  a  rational  being  may  exist  in  which  many 
of  the  elements  of  the  rational  life  are  as  yet  un- 
developed, no  rational  being  can  exist  in  which  any  of 
these  elements  is  altogether  absent.  The  advance  to  a 
new  consciousness   is  in  every  case  the  discovery  of 


STAGES  IN  THAT  EVOLUTION.  187 

deeper  meanings  or  implications  in  an  old  one.  Or,  to 
put  it  in  a  way  already  suggested,  it  is  a  progress 
which  is  also  a  regress.  While,  therefore,  it  is  true 
that  the  general  order  of  advance  in  man's  life  is  from 
consciousness  of  objects  to  self-consciousness  and  from 
that  to  the  consciousness  of  God,  yet  this  must  not 
be  understood  as  if  it  meant  that  one  consciousness  ^ 
passes  away  and  another  consciousness  comes  in  its 
place,  or  even  that  new  elements  are  externally  added 
to  those  already  given.  On  the  contrary,  even  in  the 
earliest  stage  of  his  being,  when  his  thought  is  most  of 
all  concentrated  upon  the  interests  of  the  outward 
life,  self-consciousness,  and  the  consciousness  of  God 
are  not  wanting.  Thus,  almost  from  the  first,  he  is 
conscious  not  only  of  dependence  on  objects  but  of 
a  relative  independence  in  relation  to  them;  and  he 
is  conscious  also  of  -  relation  to  a  power  which  is 
not  himself,  and  yet  not  a  mere  object  like  other 
objects  around  him.  He  is  capable,  therefore,  not 
only  of  fear  of  that  which  is  other  and  stronger 
than  himself,  or,  on  the  other  hand,  of  a  presumptuous  '^ 
self-confidence,  which  makes  him  defy  every  external 
authority  and  power,  but  of  reverence, — the  fear  which 
is  the  beginning  of  wisdom,  because  it  involves  a  sense 
of  unity  with  that  to  which  as  natural  and  finite 
beings  we  look  up. 

But,    if   this    view    of    the    relation    of    the   three 
elements    in    consciousness    be    adopted,    it    casts   an 


188  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RELIGION. 

important  light  upon  the  second  question  which  we 
had  to  answer,  as  to  the  method  of  development  of 
the  relir/ious  conseiousness  itself  If  the  priority  of 
the  consciousness  of  objects  to  the  consciousness  of 
self,  and  of  the  consciousness  of  self  to  the  conscious- 
ness of  God,  does  not  mean  that  any  one  of  these  ever 
exists  without  the  others,  what  does  it  mean?  It  can 
only  mean  that  in  successive  periods  each  of  these 
elements  in  turn  determines  the  form  of  our  conscious 
life,  and  so  becomes  the  mould  in  which  all  our  ideas  and 
ideals  are  cast.  What  we  find  in  any  one  stage  of 
man's  history  is  not  the  isolated  presence  of  any  one 
element  of  life;  but,  though  all  the  elements  are 
present,  one  is  emphasised,  and  it  tends  to  give  the 
law  to  all  the  rest.  It  becomes,  so  to  speak,  the  key- 
note with  which  all  the  others  have  to  bring  them- 
selves into  correspondence.  Thus  it  may,  I  think,  be 
proved  that  the  priority  of  the  consciousness  of  objects 
to  the  consciousness  of  self,  and  of  the  consciousness  of 
self  to  the  consciousness  of  God,  shows  itself  not  in  the 
isolation  of  any  one  of  these  ideas  from  the  others,  but 
rather  in  the  way  in  which  each  of  them  becomes  for 
a  time  predominant  and  forces  the  others  to  take 
on  its  own  shape  and  to  speak  its  own  language. 
Hence  we  can  distinguish  three  stages  in  the  develop- 
ment of  man,  in  which  the  form  of  his  consciousness 
^  is  successively  determined  by  the  ideas  of  the  object, 
of  the  subject,  and  of  God  as  the  principle  of  unity 


ST  A  GES  IN  THA  T  E  VOL  UTION.  189 

in  both ;  and  each  of  these  stages  brings  with  it 
a  special  modification  of  the  religious  consciousness. 
It  will  remain  for  future  lectures  to  work  out  this 
thesis  more  fully.  At  present  I  only  wish  to  illustrate 
it  so  as  to  make  its  meaning  clear. 

Our  first  step  is  the  easiest.  It  will  scarcely  be 
denied  that  the  earliest  life  of  man  is  one  in  which 
the  objective  consciousness  rules  and  determines  all 
his  thoughts,  or  that  in  this  stage  both  his  conscious- 
ness  of  himself  and  his  consciousness  of  God  are 
forced  to  take  on  an  objective  form.  Man  at  first 
looks  outward,  and  not  inward :  he  can  form  no 
idea  of  anything  to  which  he  cannot  give  a  '  local 
habitation  and  a  name,'  which  he  cannot  body  forth 
as  an  existence  in  space  and  time.  Even  of  himself 
he  can  think  only  as  an  object  among  other  objects, 
and  he  sees  nothing  of  the  peculiar  character  that 
is  given  to  his  existence  by  his  being  a  subject  for 
which  all  objects  exist.  He  has  none  of  that  keen 
sense  of  individual  personality — that  consciousness 
of  an  isolated  inner  life,  from  which  everyone  else 
is  excluded — which  arises  in  men  at  a  later  period. 
He  scarcely  even  distinguishes  himself  from  his  body. 
But  if,  in  this  way,  the  consciousness  of  self  is  imperfect 
or  latent,  if  it  is  forced  to  take  on  an  objective  disguise, 
still  more  clearly  is  this  the  case  with  the  conscious- 
ness of  God.  God  necessarily  at  this  time  must  be 
represented  as  an  object  among  other  objects,  a  mere 


190  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RELIGION. 

external  force  or  power  before  which  man  trembles 
with  a  sense  of  weakness.  And  Goethe's  description 
is  so  far  true  that  it  is  very  difficult  to  trace  in  this 
fear  anything  but  man's  abject  terror  for  that  which 
is  stronger  than  himself  For  just  in  so  far  as  God 
is  conceived  as  merely  an  object,  the  worshipper  must 
feel  towards  Him  as  a  slave,  who  obeys  without  a 
consciousness  of  anything  in  himself  that  lifts  him 
into  unity  with   the  power  to  which  he  submits. 

But  while  this  is  the  general  tendency  of  a  merely 
objective  view  of  God :  yet  we  must  remember  that 
even  in  this  stage  the  real  nature  of  the  relation  is 
continually  reacting  against  its  imperfect  form,  and 
making  it  impossible  to  regard  God  simply  as  an 
object  like  other  objects,  i.e.  as  an  object  that  exists 
outside  of  them  and  of  the  subject,  as  they  exist  out- 
side of  each  other.  On  the  contrary,  there  is  always 
some  effort  imaginatively  to  exalt  the  object  selected 
as  divine  above  other  objects,  and  to  assign  to  it  attri- 
butes which  are  inconsistent  with  its  externality,  or  its 
mere  individuality  as  an  object  in  space.  Poetry  soon 
begins  to  idealise  it,  and  life  it  beyond  the  ordinary 
level  of  finite  existence.  And  while,  in  the  earliest 
time,  the  tendency  is  rather  to  select  the  objects 
which  are  farthest  from  humanity  as  most  divine,  and 
so  to  deify  rather  stones  and  trees  and  animals  or  the 
heavenly  bodies,  this  gradually  yields  to  the  tendency 
to  humanise  the  gods  or  to  deify  men.     Anthropomor- 


S  TA  GES  IN  THA  T  E  VOL  UTION.  191 

phism  changes  the  powers  of  nature  at  first  wor- 
shipped into  '  the  fair  humanities  of  old  religion ' ;  or, 
where  this  is  impossible,  it  dethrones  the  earlier  gods 
to  make  room  for  a  new  humanised  dynasty.  And  at 
a  very  early  date  ideas  of  transmigration,  transforma- 
tion, and  possession  are  brought  in — to  deliver  the  god 
from  the  chains  of  the  objective  nature  attributed  to 
him,  and  to  turn  him  into  an  all-pervading  presence. 

If  what  I  have  said  is  true,  man's  life  in  this 
earliest  stage  of  it,  will  necessarily  be  vexed  with  an 
inner  contradiction,  owing  to  the  necessity  of  express- 
ing all  the  content  of  a  human  life  in  the  lowest  form 
of  consciousness — the  consciousness,  that  is,  of  mere 
objects  as  such,  and  even  of  material  objects.  The 
consciousness  of  the  self  and  of  God  must  be  dwarfed 
and  distorted  by  the  mould  into  which  they  are  forced. 
They  must  present  themselves  in  a  shape  which  at 
once  disguises  their  real  nature,  and  disturbs  the  order 
of  the  objective  world  into  which  they  are  intruded. 

Again,  it  is  possible  to  find  in  the  history  of  the 
race,  and  even  in  a  slightly  different  way  in  the  his- 
tory of  nations  and  individuals,  a  j)eriod  in  which  the 
form  of  self -consciousness  prevails  and  determines  both 
the  consciousness  of  objects  and  that  of  God.  In  such 
a  period,  the  interest  of  life  becomes  predominantly 
moral,  or  at  least  subjective,  and  the  outward  world 
loses  its  power  over  the  human  spirit.  Man  begins  to 
rise  to  a  sense  of  his  freedom  and  of  his  independence 


192  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RELIGION. 

of  the  world  about  him.  His  mind,  his  inner  life,  is 
now  '  his  kingdom';  and  the  self-determined  aims  of  his 
will,  the  realisation  of  his  happiness  or  of  his  isolated 
moral  destiny,  have  become  all-important  to  him.  He 
is  freed  from  the  superstitious  dread  of  outward  things, 
and  begins  to  take  a  cool  and  prosaic  view  of  them,  as 
instruments  of  his  life.  But,  at  the  same  time  also, 
the  poetic  halo  vanishes  from  nature.  A  glory  has 
passed  away  from  the  earth,  and  '  great  Pan  is  dead ' : 

"  From  haunted  stream  or  vale, 
Edged  with  the  poplar  pale, 
The  partmg  genius  is  with  sighing  sent." 

The  manifestation  of  the  divine  is  no  longer  found  in 
nature  but  in  man  ;  and  even  in  man  not  as  a  natural 
existence,  but  only  as  a  self-conscious,  self-determined 
subject,  Man  alone  is  supposed  to  be  made  in  the 
image  of  God,  and  the  image  of  God  in  him  is  purely 
spiritual  and  inward.  God  is  therefore  conceived  as 
a  spiritual  will  which  stands  apart  from  nature,  and 
reveals  itself  to  man  mainly  in  the  inner  voice  of  con- 
science, the  '  categorical  imperative  of  duty.'  Man's 
relation  to  God  may,  indeed,  as  in  the  Jewish  religion, 
be  conceived  as  that  of  a  subject  to  a  monarch  before 
whom  he  trembles ;  but  even  so,  he  feels  that  he  can 
obey  or  refuse  to  obey.  He,  like  the  God  he  worships, 
is  an  independent  individual;  and,  as  such,  he  is  con- 
scious of  essential  separateness  from  other  individuals 
and  even  from  God.      Such  an  individualistic  religion 


STAGES  IN  THAT  EVOLUTION.  193 

we  find  arising,  tliough  with  many  differences  of  form, 
among  many  nations  at  a  certain  stage  of  their  culture. 
The  philosophic  faith  of  the  Stoic  and  the  other  individ- 
ualist schools  that  arose  in  the  decay  of  the  religions  of 
the  classical  peoples  is  a  good  example  of  this  kind  of 
subjective  religion ;  and  we  find  a  revival  of  the  same 
spirit,  somewhat  modified  by  Christianity,  among  the 
Puritans  and  others  of  the  Protestant  sects.  In  quite 
modern  times  it  rises  to  a  philosophical  form  in  Kant. 
But  the  great  religious  example  of  it  is  the  later 
Judaism,  which,  as  I  shall  attempt  to  show  in  a  future 
lecture,  gradually  breaks  away  in  the  prophets  and  \ 
psalmists  from  the  forms  of  a  national  worship,  and  /  %.. 
becomes  an  inner  religion  of  the  individual  heart, — 
thus  preparing  the  way  for  the  universalism  of 
Christianity. 

I  have  said  that,  as  in  the  earlier  forms  of  religion, 
the  consciousness  of  God  is  reduced  to  the  form  of  the 
consciousness  of  an  object,  so  in  this  stage  it  is  re- 
duced to  the  form  of  self-consciousness.  In  other 
words,  God  is  conceived  as  a  subject,  and,  as  a  subject. 
He  is  brought  under  the  limitations,  or  some  of  the 
limitations,  of  a  human  individuality.  Hence  the 
relation  between  God  and  man  is  represented  as,  in 
the  first  instance,  an  external  and  exclusive  one. 
Yet  here,  as  in  the  other  case,  the  real  nature  of 
the  relation  between  the  infinite  and  the  finite  neces- 
sarily reacts  against  the  imperfect  form  in  which  it  at 

VOL.  I.  N 


194  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RELIGION. 

first  presents  itself.  How  can  man,  conceived  as  iso- 
lated from  God,  be  free  before  Him  ?  If  he  is  made 
in  the  image  of  God  as  a  self,  he  is  infinitely  removed 
from  Him  as  a  creature ;  and  the  awe  of  the  individual 
for  an  absolute  Being,  who  is  regarded  as  outside  of 
him  yet  so  oppressively  near  to  him,  may  deepen  till 
it  overshadows  all  life  with  the  sense  of  weakness  and 
sin.  Acting  as  "  ever,"  to  use  the  characteristic  ex- 
pression of  Milton,  "  in  his  Great  Taskmaster's  eye," 
his  view  of  life  becomes  stern  and  severe ;  he  is  bur- 
dened with  the  sense  that,  when  he  has  done  all,  he 
can  only  be  an  unprofitable  servant.  His  reverence 
is  tinged  with  an  awe  that  verges  on  superstitious 
terror,  and  it  may  easily  associate  itself  with  a  formal 
obedience  which  fears  to  swerve  in  the  smallest  thing 
from  the  letter  of  the  law.  Yet,  with  all  its  defects, 
this  religion  marks  a  great  step  of  advance  towards 
spiritual  freedom.  It  lifts  man  above  the  fear  of  the 
powers  of  nature,  and  purifies  him  as  by  fire  from  the 
pollutions  that  so  easily  mingle  with  every  form  of 
nature- worship.  If  it  narrows  his  life  by  the  sense 
of  overpowering  responsibility,  and  darkens  it  with  the 
awe  of  a  '  Searcher  of  hearts,'  it  yet  gives  him  a  sense 
of  nearness  to  the  Being  he  worships.  And  out  of 
this  must  necessarily  spring  a  longing  for  closer  union 
with  Him,  a  longing  which  is  inconsistent  with  a 
merely  negative  conception  of  His  relation  to  man, 
and  which  in  the  long  run  must  give  rise  to  a  higher 


STAGES  IN  THAT  EVOLUTION.  195 

idea  of  that  relation.  For  he  who  fears  God,  and 
nothing  but  God,  is  not  far  from  the  love  that  casteth 
out  fear. 

The  third,  or  final  form  of  consciousness  is  that  in 
which  the  object  and  the  self  appear,  each  in  its  proper 
form,  as  distinct  yet  in  essential  relation,  and,  therefore,  • 
as  subordinated  to  the  consciousness  of  God,  which 
is  recognised  as  at  once  the  presupposition  and  as  the 
end  of  both.  Here,  for  the  first  time,  the  religious 
consciousness  takes  its  true  place  in  relation  to  the 
secular  consciousness,  and  God  is  known  in  the  tru^ 
form  of  His  idea.  For,  as  has  been  explained  in 
previous  lectures,  the  idea  of  God  is  one  with  the 
unity  which  is  at  once  the  presupposition,  the  limit,  ' 
and  the  goal  of  our  divided  consciousness  of  the  world 
and  of  ourselves.  Consequently,  so  long  as  God  is 
conceived  under  the  form  of  abstract  objectivity  or 
abstract  subjectivity,  He  is  not  conceived  as  He  is  \ 
in  truth.  To  know  God  as  God,  is  to  know  Him 
as  the  Being,  who  is  at  once  the  source,  the  sustaining 
power,  and  the  end  of  our  spiritual  lives.  On  this 
idea,  however,  T  shall  not  here  enlarge.  I  shall  only 
repeat,  what  I  have  already  said  in  an  earlier  lecture, 
that  this  is  the  only  form  which  religion  can  take  for 
the  modern  world.  It  is  impossible  for  any  one  who 
has  breathed  the  spirit  of  modern  science,  modern  litera- 
ture, and  modern  ethics  to  believe  in  a  purely  objec- 
tive God  :  to  worsliip  any  power  of  nature  or  even  any 


A 


196  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RELIGION. 

individualised  outward  image,  such  as  those  of  Apollo 
or  Athene.  Still  less  is  he  able  to  worship  a  multitude 
of  such  images,  and  so  to  compensate  for  the  defect 
of  one  imperfect  form  by  introducing  others  to  sup- 
plement it.  His  God  must  be  universal;  and  if  he 
tries  to  picture  Him  in  an  outward  form,  he  will 
soon  find  it  impossible  to  rest  in  any  one  object, 
and  will  repeat  in  his  own  experience  the  dialectic 
by  which  Polytheism  disappeared  in  the  abstract 
unity  of  Pantheism.  Again,  though  our  own  religion 
is  developed  out  of  Judaism,  it  is  impossible  for 
moderns  to  recall  the  attitude  of  the  pure  Monotheist, 
to  whom  God  was  only  a  subject  among  other 
subjects,  though  lifted  high  above  all  the  rest.  We 
cannot  think  of  the  infinite  Being  as  a  will  which 
is  external  to  that  which  it  has  made.  We  cannot, 
indeed,  think  of  Him  as  external  to  anything,  least 
of  all  to  the  spiritual  beings  who,  as  such,  'live 
and  move  and  have  their  being  in  Him.'  This  idea 
of  the  immanence  of  God  underlies  the  Christian  con- 
ception; and,  if  we  look  below  the  surface,  we  can 
see  that  it  is  an  idea  involved  in  all  modern 
philosophy  and  theology.  We  may  reject  religion, 
or  we  may  accept  it,  but  we  cannot  accept  it  except 
in  this  form;  and  even  where  we  reject  it,  the 
ground  of  our  rejection  will  generally  lie  in  the 
difficulties  that  seem  to  exist  in  this  form  of  it. 
Thus   Mr.   Spencer   takes  refuge   in   the   unknowable. 


STA  GES  IN  THA  T  E  VOL  UTION.  197 

just  because  it  seems  to  him  that  the  conception 
of  a  God  who  is  neither  purely  objective  nor  purely 
subjective  must  be  an  empty  conception.  And  Comte, 
in  like  manner,  substitutes  humanity  for  God,  because 
he  thinks  that  the  conception  of  an  absolute  and 
infinite  Being,  who  is  at  once  the  Father  of  spirits 
and  the  unity  to  which  the  whole  universe  must 
be  referred,  involves  many  contradictions,  and  that, 
even  if  it  did  not  do  so,  it  is  beyond  all  possibility 
of  proof  or  verification.  For  such  reasons  they  find 
it  impossible  to  accept  that  idea,  to  which  Wordsworth 
points  in  his  well-  known  lines  on  "  Tintern  Abbey," 
the  idea  of  God  as  a  Being  who  is  above  the  contrast 
of  subject  and  object,  yet  revealed  in  both,  "  whose 
dwelling "  is  not  only  "  the  light  of  setting  suns  and 
the  round  ocean  and  the  living  air,"  but  also  the  mind 
of  man : 

"  A  motion  and  a  spirit  that  informs 
All  thinking  things,  all  objects  of  all  thought, 
And  rolls  through  all  things." 

Such  an  idea  is  rejected,  in  short,  because  it  is  'too 
good  to  be  true ' ;  either  because  it  is  supposed  that 
its  elements  will  not  admit  of  being  united  without 
contradiction,  or,  because  we  are  supposed  to  be 
so  confined  to  the  phenomenal  that  we  can  never 
verify  it. 

If,  on  the  other  hand,  it  could  be  shown  that  the 
idea  of  God  as  the  unity  of  all  knowing  and  being, 


198  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RELIGION. 

of  the  inner  and  the  outer  life,  of  the  subject  and 
the  object,  is  not  really  beyond  verification ;  if  it 
could  be  shown  that  this  idea  does  not  break  down 
in  contradiction,  but,  on  the  contrary,  is  the  pre- 
supposition without  which  all  other  ideas  must  so 
break  down,  the  principle  of  unity  which  holds  the 
intelligible  world  and  the  intelligence  together ;  if, 
finally,  it  could  be  shown  that  this  idea,  whatever 
difficulties  it  may  contain,  is  yet  capable  of  being 
rationally  applied  and  developed,  and,  indeed,  that 
every  step  in  our  knowledge  of  the  world  or  of 
ourselves  helps  us  so  to  apply  and  to  develop  it, 
then  it  may  be  assumed  tliat  no  one  would  be  willing 
to  set  it  aside.  What  is  too  good  to  be  true,  is  what 
everyone  would  wish  to  be  true ;  and  the  assertion 
that  anything  is  unreal  for  such  a  reason  involves 
a  kind  of  discord  between  our  intellectual  and  moral 
ideals  and  the  reality  of  things,  I  cannot  believe 
that  any  such  discord  exists,  or  at  least,  that,  so  far 
as  it  exists,  it  is  insoluble ;  and  I  have  already  given 
some  grounds  for  rejecting  that  way  of  reasoning, 
which  leads  to  the  supposition  of  its  existence.  In 
the  sequel  I  hope  to  give  some  farther  positive  proof 
of  the  opposite  view. 


LECTUEE  EIGHTH. 

THE    OBJECTIVE    FORM    OF    THE    EARLIEST    RELIGION. 

Gradual  Development  of  Religion — Hoio  to  explain  Anticipation.^ 
of  the  Highest  Religious  Ideas,  which  appear  very  early  in  the 
History  of  Religion —  What  is  implied  in  the  Objective  Form  of 
Man's  Earliest  Consciousness,  and  especially  of  his  Religious 
Consciousness — Its  Sensuous  and  Materialistic  Character — In 
what  sense  the  Earliest  Religion  is  Anthropomorphic —  What  is 
meant  by  Fetischism — Hotu  Imagination  gradually  Elevates 
and  Idealises  the  Objects  of  Worship. 

In  the  last  lecture  I  attempted  to  carry  a  stei> 
farther  the  analysis  of  the  idea  of  development,  and 
to  show  that  it  excludes  anything  like  an  absolute 
break  between  one  stage  and  another.  The  identity  of 
a  being  that  lives  and  develops  is  shown  above  all  in 
the  fact  that,  though  it  is  continually  changing  in 
its  whole  nature,  yet  nothing  absolutely  new  is  ever 
introduced  into  it.  This  is  a  point  which  is  very 
apt  to  be  neglected  by  men  who  are  themselves 
the  subjects  of  such  development,  especially  in  any 
important  crisis  of  their  intellectual  or  moral  history: 
perhaps,  we  may  say  that  it  is  almost  certain    to  be 


200  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RELIGION. 

neglected    by   them.      Those   who    live    through    any 
revolution  which  affects  the  deepest  life  of  man,  such, 
(.(J.   as  that  which  took  place    at  the  first  preaching 
of    Christianity,   or   at    the    Keformation,   are   apt   to 
exaggerate  the  violence  of  the   transition  which  they 
have  experienced,  and   to   think   that   all   old   things 
have  passed  away,  and  that  all  things  have  become 
new.      Yet    the    most    violent     revolution    to    which 
human   nature   can   be   subjected  can  never  be  more 
than  the  emergence  into  light  of  something  that  has 
been  growing  for   a   long  time   beneath  the  surface ; 
what    seems    at    first    an    absolute    change    is    never 
other    than    the    summed    up    result    of    a    series   of 
variations ;    and    the    final    touch    which    makes    the 
elements     crystallise    into    a    new    form    can    be    re- 
garded as  its  real  cause  only  by  suj^erficial  observers. 
Let   me    once    more    point    out   how   this   applies   to 
our    present   subject.      Those    who    describe    the    be- 
ginnings of  religion  are  apt   to  speak  of  the  religion 
of  savages   as  a  mere  brutal  terror  of  powers  which 
are  too  great  for  the  individual  to  deal  with ;  and  to 
suppose  that,  at  some  definite  period   or  stage,   such 
terror   gave  way  to  a  real  reverence   for  beings  who 
were  conceived  as  intellectually   or  morally  superior. 
But  a  closer  view  of  the  facts  always  discloses  that 
human    thoughts    and    motives    are    too    mixed    and 
complicated    to    admit  of    such    simple    divisions    or 
transitions.    The   element  of  superstitious  terror  does 


T//E  EARLIEST  FORM  OF  RELIGION.        201 

not  cease  all  at  once  at  a  special  point.  It  clings 
for  generations  and  even  for  ages  to  religions  which, 
on  the  whole,  may  be  described  as  religions  of 
reverence ;  and,  on  the  other  hand,  the  element 
of  reverential  awe  for  something  higher,  greater, 
better  than  themselves,  tinges  even  the  darkest 
superstition  of  mankind,  and  at  times  elevates 
the  sacrifices  which  they  make  to  it  to  the 
rank  of  heroism.  And  the  reason  is,  that  religion 
is  essentially  a  consciousness  of  the  infinite  pre- 
supposed in  all  the  divisions  of  the  finite,  a  con- 
sciousness which,  however  little  it  be  understood  by  ^^  V-^-^>*-v^ 
him  whom  it  inspires,  however  coarse  and  imperfect 
the  form  in  which  it  presents  itself,  is  yet  an  integral 
element  of  man's  mind,  of  which  he  can  no  more  rid 
himself  than  he  can  get  rid  of  the  consciousness 
of  the  object  or  of  himself  And  the  true  nature  of 
this  idea,  as  it  is  implied  in  the  very  constitution 
of  our  intelligence,  continually  reacts  against  the 
imperfect  form  in  which  it  is  presented.  In  this  way, 
it  is  not  unnatural  that  even  at  the  lowest  stage  of  his 
life  man  should  be  visited  with  occasional  glimpses  of 
the  highest  he  can  ever  attain.  The  human  spirit  is 
one  in  all  its  differences,  and,  in  a  sense,  the  whole 
truth  is  always  present  in  it,  if  not  to  it.  In  the 
consciousness  of  the  simplest  and  most  uncultured 
individual  there  are  contained  all  the  principles  that 
can    be    evolved    by   the    wisest    philosopher    of    the 


202  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RELIGION. 

most  cultivated  time ;  and  even  the  rudest  religious 
systems  have  represented  in  them — though,  no  doubt, 
Ij  in  a  shadowy  and  distorted  way — all  the  elements 
'!  that  enter  into  the  highest  Christian  worship.  As 
the  child  often  utters  words  of  strange  depth  and 
richness  of  meaning  which  all  the  wisdom  of  man- 
hood finds  it  difficult  to  fathom,  or  raises  pro- 
blems that  might  puzzle  the  greatest  philosopher ; 
so,  among  the  earliest  recorded  utterances  of  men, 
and  in  connexion  with  a  general  state  of  in- 
telligence and  morality  which  was  very  immature 
and  defective,  we  often  discover  strange  anticipations 
of  the  most  elevated  ethical  and  religious  ideas.  The 
golden  rule  of  Christianity,  not  to  war  with  evil 
against  evil  but  to  overcome  evil  with  good,  is 
found  imprinted  on  Egyptian  monuments  of  unknown 
antiquity,  and  it  had  been  maintained  by  Chinese 
moralists  before  the  time  of  Confucius :  it  is  implied 
even  in  the  generosity  that  mingles  with  the 
sensuality  and  cruelty  of  savages.  It  is  difficult  to 
say  when  or  where  we  may  not  find  some  traces  of 
the  ideas  of  a  divine  justice  and  a  Father  in  heaven, 
crossing  and  interfering  witli  the  coarsest  superstitions 
and  the  crudest  and  most  materialistic  conceptions  of 
supernatural  powers.  If  we  are  willing  to  take  single 
utterances  of  pious  feeling,  or  isolated  moral  maxims, 
as  evidence  of  the  effective  presence  of  moral  and 
religious  ideas,  it  would  not  be  difficult  to  construct 


THE  EARLIEST  FORM  OF  RELIGION.       203 

a  j)lausible  argument  for  the  thesis,  that  there  has 
been  no  real  progress  in  morality  or  religion  from  the 
earliest  period  of  recorded  history,  and  that  humanity 
has  always  possessed,  bound  up  with  its  consciousness 
of  itself,  all  the  light  on  these  subjects  which  it  is 
capable  of  reaching.  In  fact,  it  was  by  evidence  like 
this  that  Buckle  some  time  ago  attempted  to  prove, 
that  the  moral  consciousness  of  man  is  stationary,  and 
that  therefore  progress  has  depended  solely  on  man's 
increasing  knowledge  of  the  laws  of  nature. 

Now  I  think  we  should  at  once  avoid  both  the 
temptation  to  explain  away  these  facts,  and  the 
temptation  to  treat  them  as  evidences  that  man's 
earliest  stage  was  one  of  comparatively  elevated 
views  of  morality  and  religion,  from  which  the 
savages  have  fallen  back.  Isolated  expressions  of 
moral  and  religious  ideas  are  no  evidence  of  the 
general  level  of  thought  and  life  of  the  people 
among  whom  they  were  first  uttered;  and  their 
preservation  in  tradition  cannot,  therefore,  be  taken 
as  evidence  that  that  people  has  retrograded  from  a 
higher  stage.  Before  we  can  tell  what  they  prove  in 
any  particular  case,  we  need  to  see  what  consequences 
are  drawn  from  them  and  what  place  they  hold  in  the 
consciousness  of  the  people  in  question,  in  relation  to 
their  other  ideas  and  customs.  Taken  by  themselves, 
all  that  such  expressions  show  is  that  '  a  man's  a 
man  for  a'  that,'  that  humanity  lives  already  in  the 


204  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RELIGION. 

most  immature,  as  it  maintains  itself  in  the  most 
degraded  condition  of  men.  They  show  that  any  one 
who  has  a  human  consciousness,  and  who  lives  in 
society  with  his  fellow-men  amid  all  the  changes  of 
human  life,  cannot  but  occasionally  be  touched  with 
the  mystery,  and  elevated  with  the  greatness  of  human 
destiny.  The  soul  of  man  even  at  its  worst  is  a 
wonderful  instrument  for  the  world  to  play  upon  ;  and 
in  the  vicissitudes  of  life,  it  cannot  avoid  having  its 
highest  chords  at  times  touched,  and  an  occasional 
note  of  perfect  music  drawn  from  it  as  by  a  wander- 
ing hand  on  the  strings.  The  waves  of  emotion,  of 
hate  and  love,  of  triumph  and  despair,  called  forth 
by  all  the  tremendous  risks  and  struggles  of  mortal 
existence,  are  surely  sufficient  to  explain  a  few  antici- 
pations of  the  highest  truth  from  the  lips  of  the  savage 
or  the  child,  as  they  are  sufficient  to  explain  a  casual 
sympathy  with  noble  thoughts  and  deeds  in  the  most 
degraded  of  men.  But  the  idea  of  development  en- 
ables us  to  understand  how  these  things  should  be,  and 
should  "  overcome  men  like  a  summer  cloud  "  without 
'  any  special  wonder,'  without  calling  for  any  other 
explanation  than  the  general  identity  of  the  human 
spirit  in  all  ages.  The  evidence  of  a  real  progress 
or  development,  consistent  with  this  general  identity, 
is  to  be  sought,  not  so  much  in  the  appearance  of  dis- 
tinctly new  elements,  of  which  we  find  no  previous 
trace,  but  rather  in   the  change  of  the  relative  place 


\ 


THE  EARLIEST  FORM  OF  RELIGION.       205 

in  consciousness  of  the  elements  which,  in  some  form 
or  other,  are  always  to  be  detected  there  ;  a  change  by 
which  what  was  at  first  only  the  casual  manifestation 
of  an  exalted  sensibility  becomes  raised  into  the  cen- 
tral principle  of  a  new  order  of  thought  and  life. 

Now,  in  accordance  with  this  view,  I  endeavoured 
in  the  last  lecture  to  reach  some  general  ideas  as  to 
the  method  of  the  development  of  man's  consciousness, 
especially  in  its  religious  aspect.  And  I  pointed  out 
that  there  are  three  stages  in  that  development, 
stages  which  are  indicated  to  us  by  the  very  form 
of  that  consciousness  itself,  with  its  leading  ideas 
of  the  object,  of  the  subject,  and  of  the  principle  of 
their  unity:  or,  if  we  prefer  so  to  put  it,  of  the  world, 
the  self,  and  God.  For  though  we  can  never  separate 
these  terms,  yet  we  can  see  that,  in  the  order  of  time, 
the  consciousness  of  the  object  must  become  explicit 
before  the  consciousness  of  self,  and  the  consciousness 
of  self  before  the  consciousness  of  God.  And  the  con- 
sequence of  this  is  that  the  higher  elements  of  con- 
sciousness, those  that  become  explicit  later,  are  forced 
at  first  to  appear  in  the  form  of  the  lower  element. 
Thus  the  consciousness  of  self  and  the  consciousness  of 
God  are  both  at  first  constrained  to  disguise  them- 
selves in  a  shape  which  is  adequate  only  to  the  con- 
sciousness of  the  object ;  and  when  the  consciousness 
of  self  has  been  freed  by  the  advance  of  reflexion  from 
this  subjection,  it  still  in  its  turn  imposes  the  imper- 


206  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RELIGION. 

fections  of  its  own  form  upon  the  consciousness  of  God. 
Hence  the  consciousness  of  God  passes  through  a  series 
of  changes  from  less  to  more  adequate  forms,  and  is 
latest  of  all  in  assuming  its  proper  shape.  To  know 
God  as  God,  without  confusing  Him  with  the  object 
or  the  subject  in  their  abstraction,  is  the  highest 
and  most  difficult  attainment  of  the  religious  con- 
sciousness. Nay,  we  might  even  say  that  it  is  the 
highest  goal  of  all  human  development ;  for,  as  we 
have  seen,  it  is  the  highest  result  of  development  to 
return  upon  its  own  principle ;  and,  in  the  case  of 
man,  this  means,  to  become  conscious  of  the  unity 
presupposed  in  all  his  divided,  finite  life.  A  religion 
which  expresses  the  consciousness  of  the  infinite  in 
its  own  form,  can  alone  solve  the  great  problem  of 
doing  full  justice  to  the  secular  consciousness, 
allowing  it  all  the  room  that  is  needful  for  its 
complete  differentiation,  and  yet  overcoming  or  re- 
conciling its  divisions  by  carrying  them  back  to  the 
divine  unity  from  which  they  spring.  It  alone  can 
*  see  all  things  in  God,'  without  losing  a  clear  con- 
sciousness of  the  order  of  nature,  or  of  the  moral 
order  to  which,  in  the  social  and  political  life  of 
man,  it  is  subordinated. 

To  appreciate  exactly  the  nature  of  the  progress 
which  I  have  now  described  in  general  terms,  it 
will  be  necessary  for  us  to  examine  the  three  stages  of 
it  a  little  more  closely.     We  begin,  therefore,  by  con- 


THE  EARLIEST  FORM  OF  RELIGION.       207 

sidering  the  first  of  those  stages,  that  in  which  the  idea 
of  the  object  is  predominant,  and  determines  the  form 
of  all  our  consciousness. 

Man,  as  I  have  said,  looks  outward  before  he  looks 
inward,  and  he  looks  inward  before  he  looks  upward. 
As  a  consequence,  his  first  consciousness  of  that  which 
is  within  as  well  as  of  that  which  is  above  him,  is 
thrown  into  the  mould  of  his  consciousness  of  that 
which  is  without.  All  that  exists  for  him  in  this 
stage  is  the  outward,  the  visible,  the  tangible,  the 
sensible.  Into  this,  indeed,  as  into  all  consciousness, 
the  mind  brings  its  own  forms  of  thought  and  percep- 
tion; but  of  these  it  takes  no  direct  account.  It  is  to 
it  as  if  all  objects,  and  even  itself,  were  jDurely  given 
from  without  through  the  senses  to  the  passive  spirit. 
Hence  Hegel  called  this  the  sensuous  consciousness, 
not  meaning  that  sensation  can  fully  explain  it,  but  that 
it  does  not  itself  recognise  anything  else  than  sense  as 
the  source  of  its  knowledge.  It  is  a  consciousness  for 
which,  so  far  as  it  is  itself  aware,  the  only  connecting 
links  of  experience  are  time  and  space.  Not,  of  course, 
that  even  time  and  space  are  by  themselves  made  ob- 
jects of  thought,  but  that  the  only  unity  or  connexion 
yet  clearly  recognised  as  existing  between  things  is 
that  they  coexist  in  space  and  pass  through  successive 
changes  in  time.  For  the  sensuous  consciousness, 
therefore,  the  world  is  a  world  of  pure  externality, 
ostensibly  governed  only  by  the  least  ideal  of  relations, 


208  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RELIGION. 

the  relations  of  juxtaposition,  of  coexistence,  and  of 
succession  ;  and  these  are  not  yet  taken  as  involving 
any  real  connexion,  but  rather  the  absence  of  con- 
nexion. Things  are  heside  each  other,  events  are  after 
each  other,  and  nothing  seems  to  be  necessarily  or 
vitally  related  to  anything  else.  All  things  are  taken 
as  isolated  individuals,  and  the  causality  of  any  one  of 
them  in  relation  to  the  others,  if  thought  of  at  all,  is 
thought  of  as  something  arbitrary  and  accidental.  Of 
course,  there  is  as  yet  no  reflexion  on  the  fact  that  the 
subject,  as  being  conscious  of  all  objects,  is  more  than 
merely  one  of  them.  The  world  is  conceived  only  as 
an  aggregate  in  which  each  thing  or  being  has  its 
nature  apart  from  the  others,  or  only  liable  to  casual 
invasions  from  them ;  and  the  self  seems  not  to  stand 
on  any  other  level  than  the  objects  it  knows.  Still 
less  can  reflexion  at  this  stage  be  expected  to  rise  to 
any  direct  conception  of  the  principle  of  unity  between 
object  and  subject,  as  distinct  from  either,  yet  bind- 
ing them  both  together  as  one.  For  such  a  unity 
cannot  in  any  way  be  brought  within  reach  of  the 
sensuous  consciousness  without  at  once  converting 
itself  into  an  object  which  takes  its  place  alongside  of 
other  objects  of  experience.  In  this  primitive  con- 
sciousness then,  it  is  necessary  that  everything  should 
be  materialised  ;  for,  to  it  existence  and  materiality 
are  one.  No  idea  can  approach  it  without  being  trans- 
substantiated  into   matter.      What  is  to   exist  for  it. 


THE  EARLIEST  FORM  OF  RELIGION.       209 

must  be  felt  and  seen  ;  hence  the  universal  can  exist 
for  it,  if  at  all,  only  in  the  form  of  the  particular.     To 
us,   to   whom    abstraction    has    become    easy,    almost 
fatally   easy,   who   are   familiar   with    the    distinction 
between  facts  and  laws  or  general  principles,  and  who 
from  childhood  have   been  accustomed   to  an  almost 
dualistic   way  of  opposing  soul   and  body,  ideal  and 
material  existence,  it  is  difficult  even  by  the  strongest 
effort  of  imagination  to  throw  ourselves  back  into  the 
mental  attitude  of  those  whose  thoughts  so  persistently 
clung  to  the  form  of  external  perception,  who  so  ab- 
solutely merged  mind  in  matter,  the  universal  in  the 
particular.     The    gross   materialism   of  the    primitive 
consciousness,  its  coarse  sensuous  realism,  its  incapacity 
to  rise  above  immediate  appearance,  or  to  grasp  a  whole 
except   as  a  collection  of  parts,  make  its  movements 
obscure   and   enigmatic  for   us  ;  for  there  is   nothing 
harder  than  to  conceive  beings  with  a  mind  like  our 
own,  yet  in  which  so  much  is  merely  potential  and 
latent  that  is  actual  and  explicit  with   us.     We  are 
alternately  tempted  to  cut  the  knot,  on  the  one  hand, 
by  reducing  the  savage  to  an  animal,  or,  on  the  other 
hand,  by  giving  him  credit  for  ideas  that  are  altogether 
beyond  his  reach.     We  can  escape  the  fallacies  of  both 
views  only  by  a  clear  realisation  of  the  fact  that  the 
human  mind  is  from  the  beginning  moulded  by  ideas, ' 
of  which  it  can  become  directly  conscious  only  by  a 
slow  and  gradual  process,  and  which,  therefore,  must  in 

VOL.  I.  O 


210  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RELIGION. 

the  first  instance  present  themselves  in  an  inadequate 
form.      We  may,  to  some  extent,  help  ourselves  in  this 
difficult  task  by  considering  how  much  our  own  thought 
is  still  dependent  on   sensuous   metaphors,   and  how 
great  is  the  risk  of  its  being  drawn  down  to  the  meta- 
phors it  uses.     As  Selden  said  that  transubstantiation 
was   '  rhetoric  turned    into   logic,'    so    we  may   safely 
assert  that  much    false   theory  is   simply   the  logical 
development  of  the  sensuous  analogies,  under   which 
the  truth  at  first  necessarily  presented  and  expressed 
itself.     These  analogies  are  good  within  certain  limits, 
but  when   drawn  out  to  all  their  consequences  they 
become  entirely  misleading.      Their  value  lies  in  their 
general  verisimilitude;    but    when    they   are    literally 
taken  and  pressed  home,  when  they  are  consistently 
worked  out,  as  if  they  were  identical  with  the  idea  they 
are  intended  to  convey,  they  liidc,  rather  than  manifest 
the  truth.     Now  if,  even  at  a  later  day,  when  the  dis- 
tinction of  ideal  and  material  has  long  been  familiar, 
philosophers  like  Locke  have  been  misled  by  some  of 
the  ordinary  metaphors  in  which  the  idea  of  the  re- 
lation of  the  mind  to  its  object  is  conveyed  (such  as 
that    involved  in  the  word  "impression"),  and   have 
thereby  had  their  view  of  that  relation  distorted,  how 
much  more  might  we  expect  this  to  be  the  case  in  an 
earlier  time,  when  men's  thoughts  were  as  yet  chained 
to  the  outward  and  the  sensible,  and  when  they  were 
under  the  necessity  of  representing  in  sensuous  pic- 


THE  EARLIEST  FORM  OF  RELIGION.       211 

tares  everything  which  they  souglit  to  bring  before 
their  minds  at  all.  The  first  stage  of  thought  is  in-  , 
evitably  a  stage  of  'levelling  clown.'  For  though  men,  ' 
as  men,  cannot  avoid  having  in  their  thought  a  content 
which  is  not  sensuous  or  material,  that  content  must 
take  the  form  of  the  consciousness  into  which  it  comes. 
They  can  and  must  think  of  what  is  not  merely  out- 
ward and  physical;  but  they  are  obliged,  in  the  first 
instance,  to  represent  it  as  if  it  were  outward  and 
physical.  They  are  like  the  members  of  a  rude 
nation  who  have  none  of  the  precious  metals  to  use 
for  money,  and  who,  if  they  chance  to  come  into 
possession  of  a  diamond,  are  obliged  to  represent 
its  value  in  copper.  The  highest  has  to  be  expressed 
in  terms  of  the  lowest — the  inward,  the  ideal,  the 
spiritual,  in  terms  of  the  outward,  the  sensuous,  the 
material ;  and  it  is  only  by  the  slow  and  persistent  re- 
action of  the  meaning  upon  the  expression,  of  the  con- 
tent against  the  form,  that  the  former  liberates  itself 
from  the  latter. 

This  assertion  may  seem  to  contradict  a  very  com- 
mon view  as  to  the  earliest  form  of  human  thought.  It 
has  often  been  maintained  that  man  at  first  is  neces- 
sarily antlivopomor'pldc  in  his  conception  of  the  world, 
i.e.  that  he  represents  all  the  objects  around  him  as  en- 
dowed with  a  nature  like  his  own,  and  that  it  is  only 
by  the  slow  process  of  experience  that  he  comes  to  re- 
cognise that  there  are  many  objects  which  are  without 


212  THE  EVOLUTION  OE  RELIGION. 

life,  more  which  are  without  sensation  and  appetite, 
and  still  more  which  are  without  reason  and  will. 
"Man  gazes,"  says  Turgot,  "upon  the  profound  ocean 
of  being,  but  what  at  first  he  discerns  is  not  the  bed  ^ 
hidden  beneath  its  waters  but  only  the  reflexion  of  his 
own  face."  He  interprets  the  objects  without,  by  what 
he  feels  and  experiences  within,  and  makes  their  mo- 
tions and  changes  intelligible  to  himself  by  imputing 
to  them  the  same  kind  of  motives  by  which  he  knows 
that  his  own  actions  are  determined. 

Now  there  is  an  element  of  truth  in  this  view, 
but  it  is  misleading,  if  taken  litcralbj.  In  a  sense, 
it  may  be  granted  that  primitive  man,  just  because 
he    does    not    distinguish    the    subject    as    such    from 

/  the    object,    is    disposed    to    transfer    to    the    object 
feelings    and    desires    like    his    own ;    but    this    con- 

^  fusion  must  not  be  taken  to  imply  that  he  first  \ 
looks  into  his  own  soul,  and  then  interprets  what 
is  without  on  the  analogy  of  what  he  has  already 
found  within.  For  it  is  rather  the  reverse  that  hap- 
pens. Man,  as  I  have  already  said,  looks  outward 
before  he  loolcs  inward,  and  it  may  even  be  said  that 
he  can  find  within  only  what  he  has  first  discovered 
without.  What  is  meant  is  only  that,  while  man  knows 
himself  only  as  he  knows  objects,  yet  he  knows  objects 
only  as  he  finds  something  of  himself  in  them.  For 
if  self-knowledge  comes  to  him  only  as  he  is  reflected 
back  upon  himself  from  the  world,  yet  knowledge  of 


/ 


THE  EARLIEST  FORM  OF  RELIGION.       213 

the  world  can  never  be  other  than  the  recognition  in 
it  of  that  which  mirrors  and  reflects  the  self  that 
knows  it.  In  this  sense,  all  our  knowledge  is  an- 
thropomorphic, even  of  that  which  is  least  like  man. 
For,  though  nothing  in  the  world  reflects  perfectly  > 
the  spirit  in  man  except  his  fellovvman,  all  things  ^ 
reflect  something  that  is  in  him,  and  they  are  in- 
telligible only  because  they  do  so.  On  the  other 
hand,  we  know  ourselves  only  through  this  reflexion; 
we  are  conscious  of  ourselves  only  as  the  world 
comes  to  self-consciousness  in  us. 

"  Nor  doth  the  eye  itself, 
That  most  jnire  spirit  of  sense,  behold  itself, 
Not  going  from  itself ;  but  eye  to  eye  opposed 
Salutes  each  other  with  each  other's  form  : 
For  speculation  tui'ns  not  to  itself, 
Till  it  hath  travelled  and  is  mirrored  there 
Where  it  may  see  itself." 

All  our  consciousness  of  the  world,  in  this  higher 
sense,  may  be  said  to  be  anthropomorphic — the  re- 
flexion of  ourselves  from,  or  the  discovery  of  our- 
selves in,  the  objects  and  beings  around  us — jn-o- 
vided  it  be  at  the  same  time  remembered  that  it  is 
only  in  and  through  this  reflexion  that  we  come 
to  a  consciousness  of  what  we  ourselves  are.  But, 
in  the  earliest  stage,  the  picture  reflected  back  to 
man  from  the  world  is  one  which  has  no  distinc-  ^ 
tion  or  articulation  in  it.  It  is  a  picture  in  which 
all  beings    and   things    are,  as    it   were,  confused  to- 


214  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RELIGION. 

gether;  in  which  there  is  as  yet  no  distinct  division  be- 
tween things  organic  and  things  inorganic;  or  between 
the  different  stages  of  organic  being,  between  life 
and  sensation,  or  between  sensation  and  conscious- 
ness, liiver  and  tree,  animal  and  man,  are  not  yet 
recognised  as  having  any  essential  difference  of 
nature.  We  may  call  this  view,  in  a  special  sense, 
anthropomorphic,  because  it  draws  up  everything  to 
the  level  on  which  man  seems  to  stand.  But  it 
would  be  quite  as  accurate  to  say  that  it  draws 
man  down  to  the  level  of  the  beings  and  even  tlie 
things  around  him;  for,  on  this  stage,  he  has  the 
same  confused  view  of  himself  as  of  the  objects 
around  him.  All  things  are  gifted  with  a  kind  of 
life,  but  there  is  as  yet  no  distinction  of  kinds ;  and 
even  life  itself  is  not  clearly  distinguished  from  motion. 
The  point  of  these  observations  may  be  realised 
more  definitely,  if  we  compare  the  savage  animism — 
that  is  to  say,  the  savage  belief  in  spirits — with  the 
developed  mythology  of  Greece  which  really  does 
attempt  to  anthropomorphise  nature,  or,  in  other 
words,  to  explain  the  world  by  drawing  all  its 
powers  up  to  the  level  of  humanity.  The  savage 
has  no  definite  idea  of  the  characteristic  qualities 
of  man  which  he  could  transfer  to  other  things. 
But  in  the  confusion  of  his  consciousness,  for  which' 
there  is  no  clear  idea  of  the  distinction  between 
intelligence    and    sense,   or    even    between    dead    and 


\ 


THE  EARLIEST  FORM  OF  RELIGION.       215 

living  matter,  it  is  natural  enough  that  we  find 
what  is  dead  invested  with  the  qualities  of  the 
living,  and  what  is  living  with  those  of  the  dead. 
It  is  by  thus  thinking  away  the  distinctions  of 
later  thought  that  we  can  come  nearest  to  that 
which  it  is  all  but  impossible  for  us  fully  to 
realise,  viz.,  the  first  consciousness  of  man,  as  it 
is  indicated  in  some  of  the  phenomena  of  savage 
life,  and  of  the  infancy  of  the  individual.  What 
most  perplexes  us  in  attempting  such  realisation 
is  just  the  undistinguishinf)  character  of  that  con- 
sciousness, and  the  facility  with  which  it  passes 
up  and  dov/n  what  is  to  us  the  scala  naturae, 
without  any  sense  of  the  lines  of  division  which 
separate  one  kind  of  being  from  another — lines 
which  to  us  have  come  to  be  so  deeply  marked. 
The  civilised  observer  of  savages  is  continually 
bafiied  by  the  distinctness  of  his  own  categories  of 
thought ;  because  every  idea  which  he  finds  them 
expressing,  carries  for  him  all  sorts  of  consequences, 
and,  in  particular,  all  sorts  of  exclusions,  of  which 
they  have  never  thought.  And  if  he  has  any 
favourite  theory  of  his  own  to  maintain,  he  is  sure 
to  find  some  fact  to  support  it  amid  the  chaotic 
oiJLOv  iruvra  ■)(j)t'ijuara  of  the  savage  mind.  For  the 
difficulty  is  just  that  we  are  disposed  to  stick  to 
one  conception  at  a  time,  and  to  work  it  out  con- 
sistently,   while    to    the    savage    all    conceptions    are, 


216  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RELIGION. 

as  it  were,  Jiakl,  and  pass  into  each  other  without 
warning.  Take  this  description  given  by  Waitz  of 
the  superstitions  found  among  the  negro  races : — 

"  The  negro  carries  animism,  or  the  belief  that 
there  is  soul  in  nature,  to  the  utmost  extreme.  But 
as  his  understanding  is  too  uncultivated  to  grasp  or 
retain  the  conception  of  one  universal  animating 
principle,  his  imagination  is  carried  by  this  idea 
into  endless  trivialties  of  superstition,  suggested  by 
the  particular  circumstances  of  his  life.  Thus  a 
spirit  may  be  conceived  to  dwell  in  any  sensible 
object ;  and  often,  indeed,  a  great  and  powerful 
spirit  is  supposed  to  take  up  his  habitation  in  an 
object  which  has  otherwise  no  value  or  significance. 
The  negro  does  not  think  of  this  spirit  as  unalter- 
ably bound  up  with  the  material  thing  in  which  it 
dwells,  but  only  as  having  its  usual  or  chief  abode 
there.  Not  seldom  he  separates  in  his  thought 
between  the  spirit  and  the  sensible  thing  of  which 
it  has  taken  possession,  sometimes  even  he  opposes 
tliem  to  each  other.  Usually,  however,  he  combines 
them  as  forming  one  whole,  and  this  whole  con- 
stitutes what  Europeans  call  his  "fetisch,"  the  object 
of  his  religious  veneration. 

"  On  this  view,  it  is  not  difficult  to  see  what  is 
meant  by  the  fetischism  of  the  negroes.  On  the 
one  hand,  the  fetisches  are  a  kind  of  gods,  though 
only  inferior  or   half-gods ;  for    they   create   nothing. 


THE  EARLIEST  FORM  OF  RELIGION.        217 

but  rather  tliemselvcs  are  constantly  in  need  of  a 
material  body.  On  the  other  hand,  they  are  for  the 
most  part  nothing  better  than  the  commonest  sen- 
sible things,  which,  however,  are  believed  to  possess 
supernatural  powers ;  they  are  supposed  to  be  sacred 
to  some  higher  being,  to  be  his  favourite  abode,  or 
in  some  way  or  other  to  be  brought  into  a  closer 
relation  with  him  than  is  the  case  with  other  things. 
All  these  conceptions  remain  undistinguished  from 
each  other  in  the  consciousness  of  the  negro.  Tlie 
fetisch  is  the  god  himself  and  yet  at  the  same 
time  some  object  consecrated  to  him  or  possessed 
Ijy  him  (in  both  senses  of  the  word),  it  may  be  a 
tree,  an  animal,  a  pot,  an  offering,  a  place  of  offer- 
ing, an  inspired  priest  or  seer,  a  temple ;  it  is  at 
once  thought  of  as  the  god  himself,  and  as  something 
upon  which  he  has  bestowed  miraculous  powers,  a 
medicine,  an  amulet,  a  lucky  or  unlucky  day,  a 
prohibited  food,  or  a  poison  used  as  an  ordeal.  The 
so-called  '  medicine '  of  the  natives  of  America,  the 
Taou  of  the  South  Sea  Islanders,  are  substantially 
identical  in  conception  with  the  Mokisso  of  Congo 
and  the  Fetisch  of  the  negro.  In  all  these  cases 
we  find  the  same  confusion  of  religious  ideas,  the  same 
obscure  transitions  of  thought  by  which  all  concep- 
tions of  the  divine  flow  together  into  one.  And 
the  low  stage  of  religious  culture  at  which  the 
negroes   stand   is   shown    far    less    by    the    fact    that 


218  THE  E  VOL  UTION  OF  RELIGION. 

they  pay  veneration  to  particular  sensible  objects 
than  by  this  inextricable  mixture  of  different  ele- 
ments in  their  thoughts  of  deity."  ^ 

This  passage  relates  to  the  religious  conceptions 
of  a  particular  class  of  savages,  but  we  may  take  it 
as  an  expression  of  the  general  point  of  view  of 
the  sensuous  consciousness.-  It  is,  indeed,  just  what 
we  might  expect,  if  it  be  true  that,  in  the  first  in- 
stance, man  looks  outward  rather  than  inward,  and, 
that  in  doing  so,  he  makes  no  clear  distinction 
between  the  different  grades  of  being.  For,  as  a 
necessary  consequence  of  this,  the  form  into  which 
everything  tends  to  be  forced  is  that  which  is  most 
external  and  materialistic.  At  this  stage  immediate 
sensuous  realisation  is  necessary  for  everything  that 
is  to  be  regarded  as  real  at  all ;  and  it  is  only 
because  the  boundaries  of  the  natural  world  are 
yet  supposed  to  be  so  elastic  that  room  can  be 
made  in  it  for  any  reality  which  is  not  sensuous. 
No  doubt,  the  reaction  of  the  non-sensuous  con- 
tent against  the  form  in  which  it  has  to  be  ex- 
pressed is  seen  in  the  strange  mingling  of  high  and 
low,  spiritual  and  material,  wliich  so  much  confuses 
and  perplexes    us    in    the    uncivilised  thought  ;    but 

^  WaiLz,    Anthropologie  der  Xaturvolker,  ii.   174. 

- 1  do  not,  however,  maintain  tliat  fetiscliism  is  tlie  beginning 
of  religion  except  in  the  very  wide  sense  explained  in  this 
lecture. 


/ 


THE  EARLIEST  FORM  OF  RELIGION.       21  \> 

tliis  reaction  is  as  yet  only  sufficient  to  confuse  tl Io- 
nian's consciousness  of  the  lower  kind  of  reality,  but 
not  to  separate  the  higher  from  it. 

This,  however,   leads    me   to    observe,  that,  as   the 
savage  is  after  all  a  rational  being,  it  cannot  but  be 
that,  in  some  form  or  other,  the  elements  that  belong- 
to  a  rational  consciousness  should  present  themselves- 
to  him.     Not  only  is  it  the  case  that  the  objects  pre- 
sented to  him  in  the  outward  world  are  at  different 
stages  in  the  scale  of  being,  and  that  therefore  the  ex- 
perience of  them  is  ever  reacting  against  the  levelling 
individualism  of  his  first  consciousness;  but  we  have  \ 
to  remember  that  the  savage  always  is  more  than  he    1 
knoivs.     As  he  is  a  rational  being,  his  thought  is  ruled    j 
by   categories   on   which   he   has   never   reflected,   but 
which    nevertheless    express    themselves   in   the  very 
structure    of    his     language.       He    could    not    know 
objects   as   in    space    and    time,    if   he   were    himself  ( 
nurely  an   object   in   space   and   time.      He  could  not<^^ 
go  out  of  himself  and  rise  to  a  point  of  view  from   / 
which  he  regards  himself  as  one   individual  existing 
along   with    other    individuals   as   parts    of  the   same 
world,  unless  there  were  present  in  his  consciousness, 
as  an  element  of  its  very  constitution,  the  idea  of  an 
absolute    unity   which    embraces    all    differences    and 
grades    of    being.      As    we    have    already   sufficiently 
shown,  the  division  of  the  self  from  the  not-self,  and 
the  unity  that  transcends  that  division,  are  involved  in. 


•220  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RELIGION. 

the  simplest  perceptive  determination  of  objects ;  and 
all  these  elements  must  in  some  way  be  present  to 
every  conscious  being,  if  not  directly,  yet  in  some  in- 
fluence which  they  exert  on  his  consciousness, — either 
by  transforming  its  objects  or  by  introducing  among 
them  objects  which  otherwise  would  not  exist  for  it  at 
all.  The  confusion  of  the  primitive  consciousness, 
therefore,  lies  not  merely  in  the  fact  that  the  grades 
of  external  being  are  imperfectly  distinguished  from 
each  other,  but  in  this : — that  the  inchoate  con- 
sciousness of  self  and  of  God  which  goes  with  every 
consciousness  of  objects,  tends  to  break  down  the 
limits  of  finite  reality  by  the  intrusion  of  a  reality 
of  a  different  order.  Yet,  on  the  other  hand,  this 
higher  reality  is  forced  by  the  necessity  of  the  case 
to  mask  its  true  nature  under  a  disguise  which  dis- 
figures it. 

This  may  become  clearer  if  we  look  at  it  in  a 
.slightly  different  point  of  view.  We  have  seen  that 
the  religious  consciousness  is  posterior  in  genesis  to 
the  consciousness  of  objects  and  the  consciousness  of 
self,  though  it  refers  to  a  principle  of  unity  which  is 
presupposed  in  both.  Further,  we  have  seen  that 
whenever  the  consciousness  of  self  and  of  the  object 
becomes  fixed  and  definite,  the  consciousness  of  God 
rises  in  opposition  to  them,  and,  it  might  even  be 
said,  as  their  negation.  This  was  the  element  of 
truth    which    we    found    in    Mr.    Spencer's    view    of 


THE  EARLIEST  FORM  OF  RELIGION.       221 

religion.  Eeligion  was  thus  described  as  arising  ( 
from  a  perception  of  the  unreality  of  the  finite, 
which  itself  implies  or  leads  to  a  perception  of  the 
reality  of  the  infinite.  Discerning  the  transitoriness, 
the  shifting  and  uncertainty,  the  imperfection  and 
illusion,  of  the  phenomenal  world,  such  as  it  is  to  the 
eyes  of  sense  and  understanding,  we  are  by  that  very 
consciousness  carried  beyond  it  to  that  which  is  eternal 
and  absolutely  real.  Thus  by  a  negative  movement, 
we  seem  to  rise  from  the  finite  to  God,  seeking  in 
Him  that  which  we  at  first  sought  in  the  world 
or  in  ourselves,  but  which  we  were  able  to  find 
in  neither.  Now,  though  this  view  does  in  the 
main  represent  truly  the  logic  of  religion,  it  is  a 
logic  which  cannot  be  distinctly  discerned  in  the 
earliest  forms  of  it.  For  it  presupposes  a  more 
definite  idea  of  the  finite  than  we  can  find  there. 
When  the  secular  consciousness,  the  consciousness  of 
the  world  as  a  connected  system  of  objects  going 
through  definite  and  related  changes,  becomes  clearly 
defined,  the  religious  recoil  from  such  a  world  of 
time  and  change  must  inevitably  follow.  But,  in  the 
first  instance,  there  is  no  definite  secular  consciousness 
to  rise  above,  and,  therefore,  no  clear  distinction  of  the 
religious  consciousness  from  it.  What  we  have  at 
first  is  rather  a  confused  consciousness  of  things, 
which  we  can  neither  call  distinctly  religious  nor 
distinctly    secular,    still    less    a    reconciliation   of  the 


222  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RELIGION. 

two ;  for  such  a  reconciliation  presupposes  that  the 
secular  or  the  religious  have  been  first  divided  from 
and  opposed  to  each  other.  The  divine  is  not  yet 
sought  for  in  that  which  is  higher  than  any  or 
all  objects,  though  manifested  in  them.  Neverthe- 
less, the  trace  of  the  opposition  may  be  found  in  the 
fact  that,  while  the  idea  of  divinity,  so  far  as  it  is  yet 
attained,  tends  to  attach  itself  to  some  finite  object, 
it  is  at  first  connected  rather  with  the  objects  which 
are  farthest  from  man  than  with  those  that  are  nearest 
to  him.  It  is  rather  a  stone  or  a  mountain,  a  plant  or 
nn  animal,  that  is  at  first  deified,  than  a  man;  though 
in  the  confused  stage  of  thought  which  is  characteristic 
of  the  savage,  the  limits  of  different  existences  are  not 
preserved,  and  the  wildest  and  most  absurd  metamor- 
phoses are  readily  admitted.  I  shall  not  here,  how- 
ever, attempt  to  give  any  classification  of  savage  beliefs 
or  superstitions,  or  to  exhibit  the  order  in  which  they 
arise  out  of  each  other;  for  what  I  wish  at  present 
is  only,  in  the  first  place,  to  throw  some  light  upon 
the  characteristic  form  which  such  prindtive  beliefs 
have  taken  as  the  deification  of  particular  objects  ]  \ 
of  sense ;  and,  in  the  second  place,  to  show  how  \ 
the  inner  movement  of  the  religious  consciousness 
must  gradually  alter  and  finally  do  away  with  that 
form  or  way  of  representing  the  divine. 

If  man   is  a   '  mean    thing,'    unless    he   can   '  exalt 
liimself  above  himself,'  still  more  truly  we  may  say 


THE  EARLIEST  FORM  OF  RELIGION.       223 

that  he  is  a  mean  thing,  if  he  cannot  exalt  himself 
ahove  the  finite   objects  he  sees  and   handles.      The  I 
development  of  man's  higher  life  is  dependent  upon 
two   things :    in   the   first    place,  on   the  separation  of  j 
/   the   secular   and   the    religious   consciousness,  and,  in  ' 
the  second    place,  on   their  rcmiion.      For  it  is  only 
by  that  separation  that  either  consciousness  can  take 
a    definite    form,    and    it    is    only    by    their    reunion 
that     the     religious    can     be     made     the     means     of 
elevating    the    secular    consciousness.       But,  for    the 
savage,  the  divine  takes  and  must  take  the  form  of 
finite  objectivity,   because   that   is   the  only  form   in 
which  reality  can  as  yet  be  presented  to  him ;   and 
the  farther  we  go  back  in  development,  the  less  do 
we  find   the    object   or   ol:)jects    selected    for    worship^ 
distinguished  in  any   way  from    other  objects,   or  a 
least  distinguished  in  any  way  that  really  lifts   them 
above  the    rest.      If    the    being    or    thing,    to    which 
mysterious  reverence  is  paid,  stands  out  in  separation 
from   other   things   and   beings,  it  seems   to   be  only 
as    having    a    somewhat     greater    or     at    least    less 
measurable    power,    but    not    as    possessing    any    ex- 
cellence  which    is    essentially   different   in  kind.      It, 
or  he,   (for  at  this  stage  it    is  difficult  to    draw    the 
line    between    the    two  pronouns)    does   not  seem   to 
be   regarded    as   in    any  way    nobler    or    purer    than 
_,  his    worshippers,    or    as    setting    up    any    ideal    for 
them    to     follow;    but     only     as     having     somewhat 


'/' 


224  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RELIGION. 

more  favour  for  them  than  for  others.  Hence  the 
partial  truth  of  Goethe's  description  of  early  re- 
ligion as  '  fear  without  reverence.'  We  must  not, 
indeed,  transfer  the  demands  of  a  higher  morality 
to  those  early  times,  and  say  that  there  was 
nothing  for  the  savage  to  look  up  to  in  a  god 
upon  whom  we  necessarily  look  down.  But  even 
making  all  allowances,  it  is  often  difficult  to  detect, 
in  the  character  of  the  deities  worshipped  by  un- 
civilised peoples,  the  grounds  for  that  element  of 
reverence  which  must  be  present  as  a  saving  salt  in 
any  religion  that  binds  men  together.  '  If,'  we  are 
disposed  to  say,  '  men  bowed  down  to  such  monsters, 
it  must  have  been  merely  from  terror,  and  not  be- 
cause they  found  in  them  a  higher  self  to  aid  them 
in  their  war  against  their  own  fears  and  passions. 
If  they  worshipped,  it  must  have  been  to  secure 
the  god  as  an  ally  in  averting  danger  and  accom- 
plishing their  own  wishes,  and  not  because  they 
wished  to  dedicate  themselves  to  his  service.  It 
was  a  worship  of  slaves  who  sought  to  propitiate  or 
flatter  a  being,  for  whom  in  himself  they  cared 
nothing,  or  whom  they  secretly  hated;  and  not  a 
surrender  of  will  to  a  guardian  and  guide  who  set 
before  them  a  higher  end  than  their  own  caprice.' 
And  it  might  be  added  that  a  further  evidence  of 
the  degraded  character  of  such  superstitious  worships 
is  to  be  found  in  the  fact,  that  the  abject  terror  of 


THE  EARLIEST  FORM  OF  RELIGION.       225 

the  savage  easily  changes  into  presumption;  and  the 
prayer  and  sacrifice,  by  which  he  tries  to  enlist  super- 
natural powers  on  his  side,  into  the  magic  or  witch- 
craft, by  whicli  he  seeks  to  master  or  control  them. 
The  savage  would,  if  he  could,  get  the  better  of  his 
god,  and  reduce  him  to  the  condition  of  the  '  gyns ' 
/  of  the  Arabian  Nights,  who  are  obliged  to  serve  the 
possessor  of  some  magic  lamp  or  ring.  Thus  the  god, 
at  a  turn  of  the  hand,  converts  himself  into  a  fetisch 
or  a  spirit  subjected  to  a  fetisch.  For  the  essen- 
tial point  of  what  is  called  fetischism,  if  we  use 
that  name  for  any  general  phenomenon  of  religion^ 
is  just  this,  that  the  worshipper  has  no  thought  of 
really  devoting  himself  to  ends  which  are  represented 
as  belonging  to  his  god,  but  desires  only,  by  pro- 
pitiation if  propitiation  is  necessary,  by  magic  if 
magic  will  avail — either,  in  other  words,  by  begging 
y  and  bribing  or  by  fraud  and  force — to  use  the  god 
for  his  own  purposes.  In  this  sense  the  spirit  of  j 
fetischism  is  the  dark  shadow  which  accompanies  re- 
ligion in  every  stage,  from  the  savage  who  makes  ', 
presents  to  the  medicine  man  of  his  tribe  up  to  , 
/  the  Christian,  who  prays,  not  that  God's  will  may  | 
be  done  but  that  God  may  be  got  to  do  his  will. 

Now,  I  shall  not  here  inquire  whether  there  is  any 
religion,  savage  or  civilised,  in  which  this  element  is 
the  whole,  and  in  which,  therefore,  the  god  is  merely 
an   object  of  selfish   fear  or   hope,  and  not   identified 

VOL.  I.  p 


226  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RELIGION. 

with  any  cause  or  aim  to  which  the  individual  is 
willing,  or  at  least  is  called  upon,  to  devote  himself. 
But  I  maintain  that,  just  so  far  as  the  god  is  con- 
ceived as  a  mere  object  among  other  objects,  standing 
on  the  same  level  with  them,  and  external  both  to 
them  and  to  their  worshippers,  these  are  the  only 
feelings  which  he  can  inspire.  On  the  other  hand, 
just  so  far  as  the  divine  object  is  raised  above  other 
objects,  and  conceived  as  the  representative  of  some 
general  social  aim — as  the  permanent  centre  round 
which  the  life  of  the  tribe  or  the  family  or  the  nation 
revolves — ^just  so  far  will  fear  be  changed  into  rever- 
ence and  selfish  hope  into  self-devotion.  But  if  this 
change  takes  place,  the  object  worshipped  will  ijpso  facto 
become  idealised,  i.e.  it  will  be  filled  with  a  meaning 
which  does  not  belong  to  it  as  a  particular  object  :  it 
will  be  lifted  out  of  the  rank  of  other  finite  existences, 
and  will  have  a  higher  value  attributed  to  it.  Hence 
the  form  of  it,  as  a  particular  object,  will  be  partially 
set  aside  whenever  it  comes  into  collision  with  the 
function  thus  ascribed  to  it.  In  other  words,  the 
form  of  objectivity  which  is  necessary  to  the  religious 
consciousness  in  this  stage  of  its  development,  will  be 
constrained  to  carry  a  content,  which  properly  could 
only  be  given  to  that  which  is  above  all  finite  objects. 
It  will  be  treated  as  the  embodiment  of  a  universal 
principle.  On  the  other  hand,  in  so  far  as  the  form 
masters    the    content   or    limits   it,   the   worship    will 


THE  EARLIEST  FORM  OF  RELIGION.        227 

necessarily   degenerate   into   a   degrading   superstition 
which  does  not  deserve  the  name  of  religion. 

Now  I  wish,  in  the  meantime,  to  postpone  the 
consideration  of  the  special  nature  of  the  objects 
worshipped,  and  to  look  merely  at  the  general  form 
of  objectivity  common  to  all  such  religions.  To  re- 
present God  as  a  mere  object  is,  as  we  have  seen, 
to  express  the  divine  in  an  inadequate  form,  in  a 
form  that,  at  least,  cannot  be  made  fully  adequate 
to  the  idea ;  for  the  principle  of  unity  in  all  objects 
and  subjects  cannot  be  properly  represented  as  one 
object  among  others.  But,  at  the  same  time,  it  is 
also  true  that  in  some  sense  the  whole  is  involved 
in  every  part  of  the  universe,  and  therefore  any  part 
of  it  may  for  a  time  be  taken  as  a  type  of  the 
whole.  Hence  in  that  early  time  when  a  universal 
principle  cannot  for  itself  be  realised  in  thought — 
when  nothing,  indeed,  can  be  brought  within  the 
reach  of  the  mind,  unless  it  be  pictured  as  an  external 
object — it  is  of  the  highest  importance  that  the  object 
selected,  be  it  what  it  may,  should  be  lifted  above 
other  objects,  and  freed  from  the  limitations  that 
belong  to  objectivity.  When  the  spiritual  cannot  yet 
be  separated  from  the  natural,  it  is  of  the  highest 
importance  that  the  natural  object  which  represents 
the  spiritual  should  be,  as  it  were,  transfigured  by 
the  imagination,  so  that  it  may,  so  far  as  possible, 
symbolically  take  the  place  of  the  spiritual.     Tor  the 


228  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RELIGION. 

tirst  deliverance  of  man  from  the  sensuous  conscious- 
ness is  necessarily  the  imaginative  deliverance,  by 
which  the  general  form  of  that  consciousness  is  not 
changed,  but  by  which,  nevertheless,  it  is  made  the 
vehicle  of  a  meaning  that  does  not  properly  belong 
to  it. 

Now  this  process  of  transfiguration  of  the  sensuous 
consciousness  and  its  objects,  this  struggle  of  the 
spiritual  to  express  itself  through  the  natural,  begins 
with  the  dawn  of  religion ;  and  it  goes  on  continuously 
till  it  produces  the  highest  poetic  or  imaginative 
representation  of  the  divine,  the  highest  representation 
of  the  divine  which  is  possible  in  a  merely  sensuous 
or  natural  form.  It  then  turns  away  from  the 
naturalistic  or  objective  form  altogether ;  the  attempt 
to  represent  the  god  as  an  external  object  is 
abandoned,  and  a  subjective  religion  of  thought 
takes  its  place.  Thus  the  wine  of  spirit  at  first 
fills  the  bottles  of  sense  and  then  destroys  them : 
imagination  first  elevates  the  outward  in  order  to 
make  it  a  fit  expression  of  the  inward  meaning,  and 
then,  as  the  meaning  still  grows,  it  casts  away  the 
outward  altogether,  and  proclaims  its  inadequacy.  It 
is  this  process  which  in  rapid  outline  we  have  to 
analyse. 

The  savage  consciousness,  the  consciousness  of  un- 
civilised man,  is  rarely  'poetical,  though  it  cannot  be 
said  that  it  is  prosaic.      It  is  lawless  and  arbitrary 


THE  EARLIEST  FORM  OF  RELIGION.       229 

without  being  free.  When  it  gets  beyond  the  coarsest 
sensuous  realism,  it  wanders  without  a  rein,  distorting 
the  simplest  natural  facts,  confusing  the  shapes  of  all 
things,  and  satisfying  itself  with  the  crudest  and  most 
inconsistent  hypotheses.  Where  there  is  no  proper 
nature,  there  can  be  no  proper  supernatural ;  and  the 
vague  sense  of  something  higher  than  himself,  and 
higher  than  those  nearest  objects  which  alone  he 
comprehends,  may  attach  to  anything  and  wander 
from  it  to  anything  else.  Thus  in  the  lowest  stage  of 
civilisation,  it  seems  often  to  be  a  mere  chance  that 
directs  the  feeling  of  reverence  to  one  thing  rather 
than  others,  or  brings  one  object  rather  than  another 
into  close  connexion  with  tlie  religious  life  of  a 
tribe.  Going  a  step  higher,  we  tind  the  beginnings 
of  a  poetic  mythology  connected  with  the  selection 
and  idealisation  of  special  classes  of  objects.  The 
universal  does  not  yet  separate  itself  as  an  object 
of  thought  from  the  particular,  but  objects  are  selected 
which  have  some  special  significance  or  suggestiveness ; 
or,  in  other  words,  they  are  selected  for  their  aesthetic 
qualities — like  the  spotless  animals  which  were  con- 
secrated in  Egypt.  A  farther  step  is  indicated  by 
the  Sphynxes  of  Egypt,  and  the  composite  animals  of 
Assyrian  art,  in  which  new  combinations  are  invented 
to  express  the  growing  consciousness  of  a  mystery 
which  is  not  felt  to  be  adequately  symbolised  by  any 
natural   shape  or   form.      The   savage    stories,   full  of 


230  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RELIGION. 

coarseness  and  childishness,  which  served  in  the  in- 
fancy of  man  to  express  his  first  ideas  as  to  the 
nature  of  things,  and  which  show  little  more  than 
that  he  had  early  become  aware  that  there  was  an 
enigma  in  the  world  to  be  solved,  are  gradually 
softened  and  refined.  Eecent  researches  in  myth- 
ology have  led  us  to  recognise  the  long  struggle  by 
which  the  poetic  imagination  gradually  triumphed  over 
this  crude  material.  For  they  have  shown  that  under 
the  highest  and  most  beautiful  myths  of  India  or 
Greece  there  are  to  be  discovered  traces  of  absurd  and 
almost  brutal  legends,  similar  to  those  which  are  still 
found  among  the  savage  tribes  of  Africa  or  Polynesia. 
Such  discoveries  have  been  regarded  as  involving 
something  that  is  degrading  to  religion  and  to  human 
nature ;  but  this  is  a  one-sided  view  of  them.  They 
may  destroy  some  idyllic  pictures  of  the  earliest  state 
of  man  or  of  particular  races.  But  they  are  anything 
but  discouraging,  when  we  consider  the  light  which 
they  throw  on  human  progress,  the  evidence  they  give 
of  the  slow  but  irresistible  effort,  continued  through 
generation  after  generation  and  century  after  century, 
whereby  man  triumphs  over  the  animal  within  him 
and  makes  it  the  servant  of  the  spirit.  They  show, 
indeed,  that  the  consciousness  of  a  divine  power  is 
bound  up  with  his  very  life,  and  that,  even  in  his 
earliest  and  most  childish  stage,  he  is  compelled  to 
express  it  in  some  simple,  and,  we  may  admit,  some 


THE  EARLIEST  FORM  OF  RELIGION.       231 

coarsely  sensuous  way.  But  they  show  farther  that, 
this  expression  being  reached,  he  does  not  long  remain 
satisfied  with  it,  but  is  continually  reacting  upon  it, 
changing  and  remoulding  it  by  new  efforts  of 
imagination  and  thought.  Tims,  in  spite  of  many  a 
failure  and  many  a  recoil,  man  is  on  the  whole 
steadily  advancing  toward  a  fuller  and  clearer  ' 
manifestation  of  the  idea,  by  which  he  never  ceases 
to  be  haunted.  The  lower  and  cruder  we  conceive  I  ^ 
man's  first  thoughts  to  have  been,  the  coarser  the  i 
earthen  vessel  into  which  he  has  at  first  to  put  the 
treasure  of  his  spiritual  life,  the  more  powerful 
becomes  the  witness  of  his  development  to  the 
might  of  tlie  spiritual  principle  which  urges  him 
forward  in  his  unhasting,  unresting  course.  The  worst 
that  can  be  said  of  human  nature  we  know  already, 
apart  altogether  from  the  teaching  of  history ;  for 
we  know  that  the  raw  materials  out  of  which  the 
web  of  our  life  is  woven  are  the  sensations  and 
appetites  of  the  animal.  And  we  know  that  the 
struggle  of  the  awaking  spirit  with  those  sensations 
and  appetites  is  enough  to  explain  any  amount  of 
confusion  and  sensual  disturbance  in  the  earliest  stages 
of  human  existence.  But  the  turbidity  of  the  waters 
only  proves  that  the  angel  has  come  down  to  trouble 
them,  and  the  important  thing  is  that  when  so  dis- 
turbed they  have  a  healing  virtue.  The  significant 
fact^  in  regard    to   human   history  is,  not   what  man 


232  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RELIGION. 

begins  with — for,  as  a  developing  being,  he  must  begin 
with  his  lowest,  the  lowest  that  is  possible  to  a 
spiritual  being  in  its  first  immersion  in  sense — but 
what  he  ends  with :  how,  by  continual  reaction  on 
the  product  of  his  first  endeavours  to  manifest  and 
realise  what  is  in  him,  he  turns  it  into  a  more  and 
more  adequate  expression,  and  so  rises  on  stepping 
stones  of  his  dead  self  to  higher  things.  The  religious 
consciousness  finds  at  once  the  exhibition  of  its  nature 
and  the  proof  of  its  validity  in  the  very  history  of  its 
own  transformations. 


LECTUEE  NINTH. 

CONNEXION    OF  RELIGION  IN   ITS   EARLIEST    PHASES    WITH 
MORALITY. 

Relation  of  Religion  and  Morality — That  Objective  Religion 
conceives  God  as  a  Father — In  what  Sense  the  Earliest  Religioii 
is  Ancestor- Worship — The  Opposition  of  Gods  and  Demons — 
Social  Character  of  Early  Religion  and  Morality — The  Develop- 
ment of  Objective  Religion— {I)  The  Growth  of  Polytheism  and 
the  Effort  to  reduce  the  Many  Gods  to  One — Henotheism — (2) 
Importance  of  the  Stage  in  xohich  the  Heavens  or  Heavenly 
Bodies  came  to  he  loorshipped — The  Vedic  Religion — Why  it 
ends  in  Pantheism. 

In  the  last  lecture,  I  showed  that  religion  in  its 
first  expression  must  necessarily  take  the  form  of  the 
sensuous  consciousness  ;  i.e.  that  the  god  or  gods 
who  are  worshipped  must  be  represented  as  mere 
objects,  existing  among  other  objects  and  on  the  same 
terms  with  them.  And  I  went  on  to  point  out  how 
this  objective  form  of  the  first  religious  consciousness 
is  in  conflict  with  the  fundamental  idea  of  religion, 
and  how  this  conflict  leads  to  a  progressive  improve- 
ment of  that  form  itself.     In  this  stage  it  is  impossible 


23-t  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RELIGION. 

for  man  to  escape  from  the  bonds  of  sense.  He  is 
obliged  to  represent  his  god  as  an  external  object 
of  perception.  But,  consistently  with  this  general 
mode  of  thought,  it  is  possible  for  the  imagination 
gradually  to  elevate  the  object  worshipped  above  other 
objects,  and  to  give  it  a  completeness  and  independ- 
ence, an  ideal  perfection,  which  makes  it  a  fitter 
representative  of  the  divine.  It  is  the  essential 
function  of  art  and  poetry  to  subserve  in  this  way 
the  higher  education  of  man,  by  teaching  us  to  see 
the  universal  in  the  form  of  the  particular ;  or,  in 
other  words,  to  make  particular  objects  represent  to 
us  something  that  is  not  really  identified  with  their 
limited  existence.  The  painter  has  done  nothing, 
unless  he  has  shown  us  not  merely  the  photographic  \ 
lineaments  of  that  which  he  presents  to  us,  but  also 
the  beauty  that  "  never  was  on  land  or  sea " ;  and 
the  poet  has  done  nothing,  unless  he  has  made 
his  theme  the  vehicle  of  a  meaning  which  is  not 
confined  to  the  theme  itself,  but  connects  it  with 
ideas,  or  at  least  with  emotions,  which  are  universal. 
Hence  the  agency  of  art  and  poetry  is  just  what  is 
needed  to  meet  the  wants  of  the  religious  mind  in  its 
earliest  stage,  when  it  is  as  yet  confined  to  the  i 
objective  way  of  thinking,  and  is  obliged  to  find  ' 
room  for  all  it  would  express  in  this  inadequate 
form. 

But  before  following  out  this  line  of  thought  any 


^ARLY  RELIGION  AND  MORALITY.         285 

farther,  we  must  turn  to  another  aspect  of  religion. 
Iteligion  is  not  only  a  theoretical  consciousness,  but 
is  always  intimately  connected  with  the  practical  life 
of  man.  For,  as  we  have  seen,  it  is  always  the 
consciousness,  in  some  more  or  less  adequate  form,  of 
a  divine  power  as  the  principle  of  unity  in  a  world, 
of  which  n^e  are  not  only  spectators  but  parts. 
Indeed,  the  presence  of  this  unity  as  an  element  or 
presupposition  of  our  consciousness  is  the  only  reason 
of  man's  being  religious  at  all.  The  idea  of  it, 
therefore,  not  only  controls  our  view  of  objects  in 
their  relations  to  each  other,  but  also  our  view  of  their 
relations  to  ourselves,  and  of  our  relations  to  them ; 
and  the  most  important  of  all  the  objects  to  which  we 
stand  in  relation  are  our  fellowmen,  especially  those 
who  are  members  of  the  same  society.  If  it  is  through 
the  objective  world,  the  not-self,  that  we  are  conscious 
of  the  self,  and  if  it  is  through  the  double  relation 
of  each  to  the  other  that  we  are  conscious  of  God,  yet 
we  must  not  regard  all  objects  as  equally  concerned  in 
the  development  of  this  higher  consciousness.  It  is 
not  in  collision  with  stones  and  trees  and  animals  that 
the  light  of  intelligence  and  the  consciousness  of  a 
separate  individuality  is  kindled.  It  is  the  tension  of 
conflict  with  another  self  that  awakes  the  joy  of 
independent  selfhood  and  the  pain  of  a  finite  divided 
life.  "  Iron  sharpeneth  iron :  so  a  man  sharpeneth 
tlie  countenance  of  his  neighbour."     But  also  "  as  in 


236  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RELIGION. 

water  face  answereth  to  face,  so  the  heart  of  man 
to  man."  The  same  cause  which  makes  keen  the 
sense  of  division  and  antagonism,  also  gives  rise  to 
a  perception  of  the  need  of  union,  and  to  the  con-  \ 
sciousness  of  the  existence  of  a  principle  of  unity, 
which  is  deeper  than  the  division  and  can  overcome 
it.  Thus  our  consciousness  of  self  is  predominantly  , 
a  consciousness  of  our  distinction  from  and  relation  ^  | 
to  other  men,  and  our  consciousness  of  God  is 
developed  mainly  in  connexion  with  this  distinction 
and  relation.  To  take  a  religious  view  of  life  there- 
fore, is,  not  only  to  see  a  divine  agency  in  the 
world :  it  is  to  recognise  that  agency  as  a  power 
which,  in  lifting  us  above  ourselves,  unites  us  to  other 
individuals  and  them  to  us.  Eeligion  is  the  acknow- 
ledgment of  a  principle,  in  uniting  himself  to  which, 
man  is  at  the  same  time  brought  into  alliance  not 
only  with  nature  but  also  with  his  fellowmen.  And, 
though  at  first  it  is  rather  in  nature  than  in  human 
nature  that  the  form  is  sought  under  which  this  divine 
principle  is  expressed  or  represented,  yet  this  does  not 
prevent  the  being  so  worshipped  from  being  regarded 
above  all  as  a  principle  of  unity  in  the  social 
organism.  Man's  relation  to  God  is  inevitably  con- 
ceived as  the  ground  of  a  social  relation  between  him- 
self and  other  beings  like  himself,  which  determines  \ 
at  once  their  practical  obligations  to  him  and  his 
practical  obligations  to   them. 


EARL  V  RELIGION  AND  MORALITY.         237 

In  this  sense,  then,  we  may  say  that,  as  is  a 
man's  religion,  so  is  his  morality.  As  he  conceives 
of  his  relation  to  the  power  which  determines  his 
place  in  the  world — and  especially  his  place  in 
relation  to  other  men  who  with  him  are  the  members 
of  one  society — so  also  he  conceives  of  the  duty 
which  he  owes  to  them.  Those  who  have  denied 
that  in  early  times  religion  had  anything  to  do 
with  morality,  really  meant  that  it  does  not  produce 
what  w&  call  moral  conduct.  And  to  this  it  is  suffi- 
cient to  answer  that  their  religion  is  not  what 
we  call  religion.  But  it  would  be  absurd  to 
say  that  at  any  time  man's  relation  to  the  beings 
he  conceived  as  divine  has  not  had  a  determining 
influence  on  his  view  of  his  relations  to  his  fellow- 
men,  and  of  the  conduct  therefore  incumbent  on 
him.      And   this  would    least  of  all  be   true    of   the 

earliest  period  of  human  history.     Perhaps  we  might  

even    go    farther    and    say    that,    then    and     always,  J,  jc  *n.trt— 
religion    and    morality    are    necessary    correlates    of^fv'-'*'^^^    ^ 
each  other,  and  that  it  is  impossible  to  elevate  one  ^'^^-^•^^^ 
of  them  without  also  elevating  the  other.     Of  these  ^^'  ^f^'C* 

reciprocal    mnuences    it    would    not    be    difficult    to  • 

find  many  proofs,  but  we  must  confine   ourselves  to  ^'^^ 

one  or  two  salient  points.  U-in^i^^-^ 

In  the  first  place,  I  may  refer  to  one  very 
important  effect  on  the  conception  of  man's  social 
relations,  which   is   produced   by   the   objective   form 


238  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RELIGION. 

of  our  first  religious ,  consciousness.  In  the  absence 
of  special  counteracting  causes,  the  fact  that  the 
god  who  is  the  principle  of  unity  in  a  society, 
is  conceived  as  an  object,  carries  with  it  the  con- 
sequence that  the  connexion  of  the  members  of  that 
society  with  each  other  and  with  their  god  is  con- 
ceived as  an  external  and  natural  connexion.  And, 
conversely,  if  the  social  bond  be  regarded  as  merely 
based  on  natural  relationship,  the  god  who  is  the 
principle  of  unity  in  the  society  will  be  repre- 
sented as  an  external  object,  a  merely  natural 
existence.  In  other  words,  if  the  religion  be 
naturalistic  and  objective,  the  morality  will  neces- 
sarily take  the  same  form,  and  the  social  bond  will 
be  represented  as  simply  the  tie  of  common  blood. 
And,  on  the  other  hand,  if  the  sense  of  moral 
obligation  does  not  separate  itself  from,  or  reach 
beyond,  the  natural  ties  of  kindred,  the  god  who  is 
the  principle  of  unity  manifesting  itself  in  that 
bond  of  union,  will  necessarily  be  represented  in 
some  merely  natural  form,  and  his  connexion  with 
his  worshippers  will  be  regarded  as  one  of  actual 
physical  descent. 

It  is,  therefore,  only  what  we  might  expect  that 
in  early  times  such  descent  should  be  taken  as  the 
limit  of  the  social  bond,  within  which  alone  any 
duties  to  others  are  acknowledged ;  and  that  the 
god   who    preserves   and   sanctifies  the   bond   of  kin- 


EARLY  RELIGION  AND  MORALITY.         239 

ship  should  be  regarded  as  the  ancestor  of  all  who  ^ 
partake  in  it.  This,  however,  does  not  imply  that, 
as  Mr.  Spencer  among  others  has  maintained,  the 
beginning  of  religion  was  in  ancestor-worship ;  for  ' 
this  would  involve  that  the  god  worshij)ped  was 
always,  in  the  first  instance,  a  human  being.  Now, 
under  the  system  of  Totemism,  which  is  at  least 
one  of  the  earliest  forms  of  social  union,  we  find 
that  the  god  is  an  animal,  a  plant,  or,  indeed,  almost 
anything  rather  than  a  man.  And,  though  a  kind 
/of  anthropomorphism  appears  very  eai'ly — because  the 
sense  of  the  distinction  of  different  grades  of  being 
is  very  weak — yet  a  clear  selection  of  the  form  of 
man  as  that  which  is  primarily  or  exclusively  divine, 
comes  very  late.  The  consciousness  of  the  opf)Osi- 
tion  between  the  finite  and  the  infinite  first  betrays 
itself  in  the  tendency  to  seek  God  in  that  which  is 
far  off  from  humanity,  rather  than  in  that  which  is 
nearest  to  it.  And  anthropomorphism  in  its  full 
development  is  found  only  where,  as  in  Greece, 
the   human   mind  is   on   the   point   of  turning  away 

/   from   all   objective  forms   to   seek  deity  in   the   sub- 
jective.     While,   therefore,   I   do   not  deny   that   an- . 
cestor-worship   appears   among   the    earliest   forms   ofl    i 
religion,  yet    I    am    inclined    to    think    that,   in   the  I  \ 
majority    of    cases     at     least,    it     is     not     that     the  } 
being     worshipped     is     conceived     by     his     worship- 

/  pers  as  a  god  because  he  is  an  ancestor,  but  rather 


240  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RELIGION. 

that  he  is  conceived  as  an  ancestor  because  he  is  x 
believed  to  be  their  god.  For  the  god  is  yet  re- 
presented as  a  mere  object,  and  the  only  way  in 
which  men  can  as  yet  think  of  an  objective  power,  \ 
which  is  not  themselves,  as  being  friendly  to  them, 
is  by  supposing  it  to  be  of  their  own  blood.  In 
this  way  the  god  cannot  be  brought  near  to  his 
worshipper,  except  by  regarding  him  as  a  father  or  ^  I 
remoter  ancestor  who  is  still  watching  over  his 
family.  The  difficulties  of  thinking  of  a  plant  or 
an  animal  as  the  progenitor  of  a  race  of  men  are 
disregarded,  difficulties  of  course  not  very  great  to 
those  who  have  as  yet  no  firm  hold  of  the  conception 
of  la^,  and  who  are  ready  to  believe  that  anything 
may  come  from  anything.  This  is  the  only  rational 
way  in  which  we  can  explain  how  plants  and 
animals,  rocks  and  rivers,  and  what  not,  should  be  \ 
at  once  worshipped  as  gods  and  represented  as 
ancestors,  while  the  explanations  of  those  who  make 
ancestor- worship  the  basis  of  all  religion,  are  neces- 
sarily entangled  in  all  the  difficulties  of  Euhemerism.^ 
On  the  other  hand,  as  it  is  the  simplest  fact  of  morals 
that  the  natural  tie  of  blood  is  the  form  under  which 

^  Cf.  Principles  of  Sociology,  Vol.  I.  Part  I.  Chap.  22  scq. 
See  especiaffy  §§  170-171,  where  Mr.  Spencer  tells  us  that  the 
animal  names  given  to  gods,  such  as  wolf,  fox,  and  the  like, 
were  originally  nicknames  given  to  the  illustrious  forefathers 
of  the  race,  because  of  their  ferocity,  cunning,  or  other  pro- 
minent characteristics. 


EARLY  RELIGION  AND  MORALITY.         241 

the  consciousness  of  spiritual  relation  between  man 
and  man  first  develops  and  matures  itself,  so  it 
is  only  the  other  aspect  of  that  fact  that  religion, 
as  the  consciousness  of  the  spiritual  basis  of  unity 
which  expresses  itself  in  such  relations,  should  take 
the  form  of  filial  piety.  And  this  holds  good  even 
of  a  time  when  the  idea  of  humanisin"  the  gods, 
or  of  recognising  humanity  as  essentially  kindred 
with  divinity,  is  as  yet  far  off. 

If  these  remarks  have  any  truth,  they  may  enable 
us  to  realise  two  points  that  are  of  no  little  import- 
ance in  the  history  of  religion.  In  the  first  place,  we 
can  see  how  it  is  that  in  all  religious  Particularism, 
i.e.  in  all  systems  of  religion  in  which  the  god  is 
identified  with  a  particular  object  in  the  natural 
world,  and  is  conceived  as  the  head  or  father  of  a 
particular  clan  or  kinship  or  nation,  we  have  a 
polytheism  or  plurality  of  gods,  at  least  in  the  sense 
that  the  family,  tribe,  or  nation,  while  it  worships  its 
own  god,  does  not  deny  the  existence  of  other  gods^ 
who  preside  over  other  families  or  nations.  In  the 
second  place,  we  are  enabled  to  understand  why, 
under  these  conditions,  religion  and  morality  stand  on 
the  one  side  contrasted  with,  but  easily  passing  into, 
superstition    and   immorality  on    the   other.      For,   at 

^  Judges  xi.  24  :  "  Wilt  not  thou  possess  that  which  Chemosh 
thy  god  giveth  thee  to  possess  ?  So  whomsoever  the  Lord  our 
God  hath  dispossessed  before  us,  them  will  we  possess." 

VOL.  I.  Q 


242  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RELIGION. 

this  stage,  morality  simply  means  the  solidarity  of  the 
little  society,  as  expressing  itself  in  the  faithfulness  of 
its  members  to  each  other ;  and  religion  means  simply 
their  loyalty  and  devotion  to  the  friendly  power,  which 
is  represented  as  the  forefather  of  the  family  or  kin- 
ship.     Bat  the  society,  or  kinship,  is  surrounded  by 
other  similar  societies  which  are  unfriendly  to  it,  and 
serve  other  gods.      Every  victory  of  his  own  society 
!ihus   becomes  to  the  member  of  it  a  victory  of  Ms 
god,  and  every  defeat  a  victory  of  other  gods.     And, 
as    at    this    stage   he    can    scarcely    conceive   of    the 
difference  between  good  and  evil  powers,  except  as  the 
difference  between  a  power  that  is  friendly  and  one 
that  is  adverse  to  the  society  with  which  all  his  life 
is  identified,  so  it  may  be  said  that  the  gods  of  other 
societies  are  his  demons,  and  that  his  god  is  a  demon 
to  them.     Thus  the  war  of  good  and  evil  is  for  him 
a  war  at  once  on  heaven  and  on  earth,  a  conflict  of 
natural  and  also  of  supernatural  powers.      And  a  blow 
at  the  existence  of  the  kinship  or  tribe  to  which  he 
belongs  is  for  him  a  victory  won  by  the  powers  of  evil 
over  the  powers  of  good ;  or,  in  other  words,  a  victory 
won  by  superstition  and  immorality  over  religion  and 
morality.     If  the  circle  of  beings  with  whom  nature 
and  custom  have  made   him  one — the  little  friendly 
world   in  which  he    has    moved  and    had   his   being, 
to  which   all   his   higher  life   is  attached,  which  has 
been   continually   working   for   him,  as   he   has   been 


\ 


EARLY  RELIGION  AND  MORALITY.         243 

working  for  it— be  broken  up,  he  becomes  an  outcast 
without  rights  and  without  duties,  and  his  gods  have 
been  dethroned  by  hostile  supernatural  powers  which 
he  must  now  seek  somehow  to  evade  or  appease.  As 
Homer  says,  he  is  a^pj/rw/o,  aOe/xicTTog,  auecmo^, 
without  kin,  without  law,  without  a  hearth  on  which 
he  can  burn  incense  to  the  gods  of  his  fathers.  He 
is  cut  off  at  once  from  the  charities  of  heaven  and 
those  of  earth ;  and  his  unprotected  state,  as  it  leaves 
him  open  to  the  constant  fear  of  outrage  from  men,  so 
it  makes  him  ready  to  crouch  in  slavish  terror  at  any 
appearance  which  he  can  regard  as  the  threat  of  an 
angry  god.  On  the  other  hand,  any  tribal  triumph  or 
deliverance  becomes  to  him  the  sign  that  his  god  is 
stronger  than  other  gods,  and  at  the  same  time  knits 
him  in  closer  union  to  the  kinship  that  has  thus 
received  the  blessing  of  heaven.  The  sense  of  the 
privilege  and  honour  of  belonging  to  such  a  society, 
and  of  the  duty  of  living  for  it,  becomes  strengthened, 
and  he  conceives  of  the  gods  of  his  conquered  foes  as 
only  defeated  demons,  who  can  do  nothing  against 
him.  The  consciousness  of  belonging  to  a  victorious 
race  brings  with  it  a  growing  sense  of  personal  dignity 
and  increased  readiness  to  sacrifice  himself  for  the  life 
of  the  community  which  is  the  source  of  his  pride. 
And  this  pride  is  at  the  same  time  purified  and 
elevated  by  the  conviction  that  in  serving  the  com- 
munity   he   is    serving    his    god.      Thus   religion    and 


244  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RELIGION. 

morality,  the  consciousness  of  solidarity  with  the 
community  and  the  consciousness  of  unity  with  the 
god  whom  he  worships,  combine  to  redeem  his  life 
from  the  fear  of  unfriendly  powers,  natural  or  super- 
natural, and  to  educate  him  to  that  higher  fear  or 
reverence  which  is  the  '  beginning  of  wisdom.' 

It  appears  then  that  religion  combines  itself  with 
a  distinct  morality  and  so  disengages  itself  from  super- 
stition, just  in  so  far  as  in  it  the  alliance  of  the  mem- 
bers of  a  kinship  with  each  other  is  consecrated  by 
their  alliance  with  a  divine  being  who  is  conceived 
as  at  once  their  god  and  their  father.  Farther,  as 
this  divine  being  is  often,  if  not  always,  represented  as 
some  natural  existence  other  than  man,  the  alliance 
between  man  and  man  is  also  an  alliance  between 
man  and  nature,  or  at  least  some  part  of  nature.^  And 
both  alliances  are  conceived  on  the  only  type  then 
comprehensible,  i.e.  on  the  type  of  blood  relationship. 
Such  an  alliance  raises  a  man  above  his  natural  self, 
by  making  him  regard  himself  solely,  or  at  least  mainly, 
as  the  member  of  a  society,  devotion  to  the  service  of 
which  is  also  devotion  to  God.  Outside  of  this  circle 
he  finds  only  hostile  or  indifferent  powers,  and  in  the 
case  of  defeat  or  disaster  to  the  society,  his  religion 
sinks  into  spirit-scaring  and  magic.  Indeed,  if  we  go 
back  to  the  earliest  stage— if  that  stage  was  anything 

1  Cf.  Robertson  Smith,  Lectures  on  the  Religion  of  the  Semites, 
First  Series,  p.  117  seq. 


EARLY  RELIGION  AND  MORALITY.         245 

like  what  we  find  among  the  lowest  savages — the  divi- 
sion between  religion  and  superstition  is  very  uncertain 
and  fluctuating ;  and,  as  a  consequence  or  necessary 
correlate  of  this,  the  social  bond  is  only  strong  enough 
to  save  life  from  being  what  Hobbes  called  it,  a 
'  war  of  all  against  all.'  But,  on  the  other  hand,  as 
we  nowhere  find  an  entire  absence  of  social  unity,  j 
so  we  nowhere  find  a  mere  demon-worsMp,  in  which/  / 
there  is  no  being  worthy  to  be  regarded  as  a  god,  no 
favouring  power  which  can  be  reverenced  as  well  as 
feared.  Of  course  the  line  is  not  easy  to  draw ;  for, 
with  the  savage,  the  consciousness  of  the  friendliness 
of  the  god  is  imperfect  and  easily  disturbed.  His  own 
ferocity  constantly  tends  to  turn  the  object  of  his 
worship  into  a  cruel  and  arbitrary  being,  whose  favour 
can  be  won  only  by  dreadful  sacrifices  and  pro- 
pitiations. On  the  other  hand,  the  god,  just  because 
he  is  a  natural  object,  or  the  personification  of  a  class 
of  such  objects,  is  still  partly  a  fetiscli, — if  we  may  use 
the  word  fetischism  to  indicate  that  the  being  wor- 
shipped is  still  regarded  merely  as  one  finite  thing 
or  object  among  others.  And,  just  so  far  as  this  is 
the  case — so  far  as  the  object  is  not  lifted  by 
imagination  out  of  the  ranks  of  other  objects,  so  that 
practically  it  ceases  to  be  treated  as  a  mere  object — 
the  fear  of  it  and  the  hope  of  favour  from  it  cannot 
pass  into  a  real  religious  reverence  and  devotion. 
At  the  same  time,  while  it  is  hard  to  detect  the 


246  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RELIGION. 

early  steps  of  the  process  by  which  light  and  dark- 
ness, religion  and  superstition,  morality  and  im- 
morality, are  first  separated,  we  can  see  that  from  the 
beginning  the  advance  is  in  the  direction  already 
indicated.  Pieligion  at  first  grows  and  develops  in  \^ 
close  connexion  with  social  morality.  At  a  later 
time  there  may,  indeed,  arise  an  individualistic 
morality,  a  morality  which  does  not,  directly  at  least, 
rest  on  the  sense  of  community  with  others ;  and 
also  a  religion  which  connects  itself  with  a  moral 
ideal  which  is  purely  subjective :  we  shall  have  in  the 
sequel  to  consider  more  closely  what  is  the  origin  and 
nature  of  such  morality  and  religion.  But  in  an 
earlier  age  it  may  safely  be  said  that  morality  must 
base  itself  upon  the  consciousness  that  man  as  an  indi-  \ 
vidual  is  only  the  organ  and  servant  of  some  narrower 
or  wider  community, — be  it  the  community  of  family, 
of  tribe,  or  of  nation ;  and  upon  the  readiness  of 
the  individual  to  act  in  the  spirit  of  this  belief,  and  to 
surrender  his  individual  interests,  not  indeed  to  the 
egoism  of  others,  but  to  the  greater  ego  of  the  com- 
munity. And  such  morality  has  always  gone  with  a 
corresponding  religion  ;  for  the  greater  ego,  to  the  \ 
service  of  which  life  was  devoted,  was  always  con- 
ceived as  having  an  existence  not  merely  in  the 
changing  collection  of  individual  beings,  who  at  any 
time  constituted,  so  to  speak,  the  hody  of  the  com- 
munity, but  in  an  ideal  and   divine  being  who  was  its 


EARLY  RELIGION  AND  MORALITY.         247 

soul.  Thus  the  worship  of  a  family  god  consecrated 
the  life  of  the  family  as  something  for  which  the  indi- 
viduals, who  in  successive  generations  made  up  the 
family,  had  to  live  and  die,  and  from  which  they 
derived  all  the  worth  and  dignity  of  their  individual 
lives.  The  theory  of  existence,  so  to  speak,  was  that 
one  life  flowed  out  from  one  centre  in  the  god,  who 
was  the  head  and  original  parent  of  the  family;  that  it 
manifested  itself  in  the  family  as  one  body,  all  whose 
members  were  continually  nourished  from  the  one 
divine  source  of  its  life ;  and  that  it  was  ever  flowing 
back  to  that  source  in  the  failing  and  death  of  the 
individual  members,  only  to  reappear  in  the  new 
generation  that  took  their  place.  The  importance 
attributed  in  early  times  to  the  persistence  of  the 
family  or  the  gens  in  new  representatives,  who  should 
keep  up  the  domestic  or  gentile  sacra,  so  that  there 
/  should  always  be  '  a  seed  to  serve '  the  god  of  the  kin- 
ship, shows  how  closely  these  ideas  hung  together : 
the  ideas  of  the  solidarity  of  the  kinship,  of 
the  subordination  of  the  life  of  the  individual 
to  its  life,  and  of  the  common  worship  of  a  god  who 
was  the  permanent  centre  round  which  it  revolved 
and  in  whose  name  it  fought  and  conquered.  Such 
devotion  to  the  community  in  the  earliest  times  was 
made  somewhat  easier  by  the  very  narrowness  of  the 
little  society,  by  the  instant  necessity  for  union  as  the 
condition   without  which   neither  it  nor  its  members 


248  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RELIGION. 

could  survive,  and  by  the  consequent  impossibility 
of  individual  interests  entering  into  an  effective  rivalry 
with  those  that  were  common.  Under  this  state  of 
things  it  was  not  so  much  that  the  independence  of 
the  individuals  was  suppressed,  as  that  it  never  got 
time  or  opportunity  to  develop  itself.  The  society 
was  socialistic,  not  because  of  the  self-surrender  of 
its  members,  but  because  its  members  had  not  yet 
acquired  any  sense  of  a  right  and  honour  belonging  to 
them  as  separate  persons.  Hence  the  only  danger  to 
the  unity  of  the  society  lay  in  the  caprices  and 
passions  of  the  natural  man,  a  danger  which  all  the 
influences  of  custom,  tradition,  and  religion  were  em- 
ployed to  counteract ;  and  which  they  could  counter- 
act the  more  easily  that  no  moral  idea  or  sense  of 
right  was  enlisted  on  the  other  side.  If  individuals  at 
this  stage  resisted  social  pressure,  it  was  not  in  the 
name  of  any  individual  right  which  they  conceived 
themselves  to  possess.  The  defective  differentiation 
of  early  society  was  thus  one  of  the  safeguards  of 
its  unity.  But,  at  the  same  time,  it  lowered  the 
character  of  the  social  unity,  the  necessity  of  which 
was  not  yet  mediated  by  the  freedom  of  its  mem- 
bers ;  for  there  can  be  no  altruism  in  any  high 
sense  where  there  is  so  little  room  left  for  egoism, 
and  to  be  truly  unselfish  man  must  know  in  all 
the  fulness  of  its  meaning  what  it  is  to  be  a  self. 
And  the  defectiveness  of  the  moral  bond  of  man  to 


EARLY  RELIGION  AND  MORALITY.         249 

man   in   such  a   society  of  course  carries  with  it  an    ' 
equally  defective  stage  of  religion ;  for  where  man  is 
not  free  in  relation  to  man,  there  he  cannot  stand  in  a 
^/spiritual  relation  to  God. 

From  this  it  follows  that  the  natural  bond  of 
the  family  or  kinship  must  separate  itself  from,  and 
subordinate  itself  to,  the  comparatively  artificial  and 
ideal  bond  of  the  state,  whose  unity  lies  in  the  laws 
on  which  it  is  based,  ere  we  can  have,  in  the  full 
sense  of  the  word,  a  spiritual  morality  and  religion. 
/Yet,  at  the  same  time,  in  spite  of  this  defect,  the  family 
is  not  only  the  first  society  but  the  type  of  all  society ; 

/  for  it  is  the  true  socialistic  community,  in  which  the 
differences  of  individuals  are  dissolved,  and  egoism  and 
altruism  are,  as  it  were,  identified  by  affection.  And, 
for  similar  reasons,  it  may  fairly  be  said  that  in  the 
earliest  society,  in  which  the  tie  of  blood  is  the 
fundamental  basis,  and  in  which  that  tie  is  conceived 
as  uniting  the  members  at  once  to  each  other  and  to 
their  God,  we  find  a  prefigurement  or  anticipation  of 

/  the  highest  kind  of  community  to  which  man  can  rise, 
— a  community  of  man  with  man  in  the  service  of  a  | 
God  who  finds  his  highest  manifestation  just  in  this 
community,  a  kingdom  of  this  world  which  is  also  a 
kingdom  of  heaven.  Without,  however,  looking  for- 
ward so  far,  we  may  observe  that  it  is  this  same 
principle, — showing  itself  on  a  wider  scale,  and  supple- 
mented by  other  principles  of  which  we  cannot  yet 


\ 


250  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RELIGION. 

speak — which  we  see  manifesting  itself  in  the  civic 
and  religious  life  of  Greece.  Thus  it  was  the  ideal 
unity  of  the  Athenian  state,  as  worshipped  in  the 
goddess  Athene,  which  held  all  the  citizens  together  in 
one  community  in  the  present,  and  bound  the  present 
of  Athens  to  the  past  and  the  future.  And  in  spite  of 
the  wide  division  which,  as  we  shall  see,  separates  the 
religion  and  morality  of  Israel  from  those  of  other 
nations,  it  was  undoubtedly,  in  the  first  instance,  con- 
nected with  the  idealisation  of  a  domestic  and  tribal 
unity,  which  expressed  itself  in  the  worship  of  the 
God  of  Abraham,  Isaac,  and  Jacob,  and  which  unitedx 
all  the  members  of  the  nation  together  by  bindnig 
them  to  one  Lord.  In  short,  whatever  more  we  may 
find  in  these  later  and  more  developed  religions,  we 
invariably  discover  this  primitive  type  at  the  bottom  ;  \ 
a  type  in  which  an  organised  social  life,  with  a  tradi- 
tion of  the  past  and  a  hope  for  the  future,  is  based  on, 
and  sustained  by,  faith  in  a  divine  principle,  which  is 
at  once  a  power  over  nature  and  the  abiding  centre 
of  the  changeful  life  of  man. 

This  is  the  general  type  of  religion  to  which  almost 
all  the  religions  of  the  ancient  world  may  be  referred, 
though  it  is  no  doubt  variously  modified  in  different 
ages  and  nations.  In  the  history  of  its  development 
two  points  seem  especially  to  deserve  notice :  on  the 
one  hand,  the  growth  of  polytheism,  and,  on  the  other  ' 
hand,  the  effort  to  recover  the  divine  unity  either  by 


EARLY  RELIGION  AND  MORALITY.         251 

generalisation  or  by  a  monarchical  subordination  of  gods. 
It  does  not  seem  to  be  the  case  that  the  earliest  religion 
/  is  distinctly  polytheistic,  nor  that  it  is  distinctly  mono- 
theistic. As  the  god  is  then  necessarily  conceived  as 
an  object  among  other  objects,  though  of  a  higher 
character  than  belongs  to  them,  so  the  idea  of  his 
existence  does  not  exclude  the  existence  of  other  gods. 
Nay,  we  might  even  say  it  implies  it,  since  the  god  is 
represented  as  the  head  of  a  little  kinship,  which 
stands  in  a  relation,  sometimes  friendly  but  generally 
hostile,  to  other  similarly  organised  kinships.  Again, 
it  was  inevitable  that  in  course  of  time  a  process  of 

\  aggregation  and  segregation  of  such  social  units  should 
take  place.  Kinships  which  formerly  had  only  a  small 
number  of  members,  and  which,  therefore,  were  held 
together  by  the  strongest  inward  and  outward  necessity, 
grew  into  larger  groups  of  families  or  tribes  which  had 
no  such  intense  feeling  of  solidarity.  And  every  such 
partial  division  tended  to  give  rise  to  some  difference 
of  worship.  Or  again,  in  the  struggle  for  existence, 
social  units  which  formerly  were  separate,  were  forced 
,  into  unity  by  conquest,  or  by  the  necessity  of  resisting 
a  common  enemy ;  and  the  different  gods  which  had 
been  worshipped  by  the  different  sections  came  to  be 
treated  as  concurrent  powers,  which  divided  the  divine 
authority  between  them.  Again,  as  men's  ideas  of 
nature  widened,  there  was  a  tendency  to  supplement 

/    the  deficiency  of  a  god  who  represented  one  department 


252  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RELIGION. 

or  aspect  of  nature,  by  introducing  other  gods  who  repre- 
sented other  departments  or  aspects  of  it.  The  same 
impulse  which  at  a  later  time  led  to  a  multiplication 
of  the  attributes  or  names  of  the  divinity,  at  an  earlier 
stage  was  satisfied  in  a  simpler  way  by  the  multipli- 
cation of  divinities  themselves.  The  facility  with  which, 
under  this  phase  of  thought,  men  were  ready  to  in- 
crease the  number  of  their  gods,  cannot  easily  be  under- 
stood by  those  with  whom,  as  with  us,  monotheism  has 
dried  up  the  springs  of  mythology.  But  a  book  like 
Sir  Alfred  Lyall's  Asiatic  Studies  vividly  brings  before 
us  the  fact  that  there  are  still  many  races  in  that  stage 
of  development  when  any  new  circumstance,  event,  or 
person,  may  become  the  occasion  for  the  apotheosis  of  a 
new  divinity.  Half  conscious  that  what  he  is  seeking 
is  the  infinite,  though  still  bound  by  his  imagination 
to  the  finite,  the  polytheist  has  a  secret  dissatisfaction 
with  his  own  religion;  and  this  drives  him  continually 
to  add  new  divinities  to  his  Pantheon,  as  if  by  the 
multiplication  of  finites  he  could  reach  the  infinite. 

On  the  other  hand,  this  tendency  to  difterentiate  is 
met  by  an  opposite  tendency  to  unity.  The  idea  of 
God,  which  is  bound  up  with  man's  consciousness  of 
himself— I.e.  the  idea  of  God  as  the  infinite  principle 
of  unity  which  is  beyond  all  the  difterences  of  the 
finite,  though  implied  in  them  all — is  continually 
working  against  a  jnere  external  polytheistic  system 
which  ranks  the  gods  together  as  independent  powers ; 


EARLY  RELIGION  AND  MORALITY.         253 

it  is  continually  breaking  down  the  boundaries  which 
have  been  set  up  between  their  separate  spheres,  and 
extending  without  limit  the  attributes  of  any  god  that 
is  at  the  moment  the  object  of  worship.  Thus  is  pro- 
duced the  phenomenon  to  which  Professor  Max  Midler 
has  given  the  name  of  Hcnotheism,  i.e.  a  polytheism,  in 
which  the  gods  are,  as  it  were,  continually  melting  into 
each  other ;  or  in  which  any  one  of  them  may  be 
stretched  to  the  infinite  so  as  to  leave  no  room  for  the 
operation  of  the  others.  The  very  attitude  of  worship 
is  an  attitude  of  devotion,  of  absolute  self-surrender, 
which  in  the  intensity  of  its  feeling  excludes  all 
reservation,  and  so  tends  to  lift  its  object  beyond  all 
the  limits  which  at  other  times  may  be  recognised  for 
it.  Thus  the  chaos  of  Polytheism  is  never  without 
some  beginnings  of  a  cosmos ;  or,  perhaps  we  should 
rather  say,  the  religious  instinct,  with  its  controlling 
tendency  to  the  one  and  the  infinite,  is  continually 
striving  to  gain  the  mastery  over  the  multiplicity  of 
forms  which  in  this  stage  of  thought  are  forced  upon 
it  by  sense  and  imagination. 

It  is  not  here  necessary  to  speak  of  the  mani- 
fold shapes  of  mythology  which  have  appeared  in  the 
long  struggle  of  religion  with  the  first  inadequate  form 
of  its  expression.  Perhaps,  at  the  present  stage  of 
inquiry,  it  is  impossible,  if  it  ever  will  be  possible, 
to  state  exactly  the  steps  by  which  mythological  con- 
ceptions were  gradually  elevated  and  finally  abolished. 


254  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RELIGION. 

Here  I  shall  confine  myself  to  pointing  out  one  or 
two  of  the  most  prominent  crises  in  the  long  struggle. 
The  first  of  these  is  that  which  has  given  rise  to  what 
is  called  roughly  the  solar  theory  of  mythology.  In 
many  nations — among  the  Peruvians  and  Mexicans 
in  America,  and  again  in  different  ways  in  Egypt, 
in  China,  and  in  early  India — we  find  a  worship  of 
the  heavens  or  the  heavenly  bodies,  of  the  great 
elemental  powers  of  sky  and  earth,  rising  above  v 
the  undergrowth  of  domestic  and  tribal  worships, 
limiting  and  dominating  though  never  destroying 
them.  And  this  religious  progress  seems  to  go 
along  with  the  development  of  a  wider  national 
unity,  both  as  its  effect  and  its  cause.  The  absurd 
extension  at  one  time  given  to  the  solar  mythic 
theory  has  of  late  produced  a  reaction  which  has 
in  the  main  been  wholesome,  in  so  far  as  it  has 
led  to  the  rejection  of  one  exclusive  interpretation 
of  myths.  But  the  main  vice  of  that  theory  was 
that  it  referred  to  the  earliest  period  of  religious 
history  a  mode  of  concejDtion  which  really  indi- 
cates a  considerable  advance  in  civilisation.  Some 
childish  myths  about  the  sun  and  the  heavenly 
bodies,  indeed,  appear  to  be  as  early  as  anything 
we  can  trace  in  the  history  of  mythology ;  but  the 
marked  predominance  of  such  ideas,  and  the  separ- 
ation of  them  from  the  crowd  of  other  mythic 
fancies,  appears   to    be    the  characteristic    of    a    par- 


V 


EARLY  RELIGION  AAW  MORALITY.         255 

ticular   stage   in   the   development    of   man, — a   stage 
in    which    he    has   attained   to   a  certain   width   and 
freedom    of    view    as    to    the    nature    of   the    world 
in    which    he    is    placed,  partly    as    the    cause,  and 
/  partly  as  the  effect,   of   a   wider  national    conscious- 
ness.     The    physical    universalism    of    the    heavens, 
if    we    may    use    the    expression,    is    thus    the    first 
form  in  which  the   idea  of  a   universal  God,  a  God 
who    is   above,   though    not   as    yet  exclusive   of  all 
others,  presents  itself   to   the   spirit    of   man.     Aris- 
totle, in  speaking  of  the  Eleatics,  the  first  school  of 
philosophy  that  laid  hold   of  the    idea   of  the  unity 
/of    the    world    as    an    abstract    principle,    says    that 
Xenophanes,  the  founder  of  that  school,  "  looked  up 
to  the  expanse  of  heaven,  and   declared  that    '  all   is 
one.'"      It    was    by    a    similar    process    of    thought 
that,    at     a    much     earlier     date,    the    Chinese,    the 
Egyptians,  the  Indians,  the  Persians, — in  short,  almost 
all  the  nations  wdth  whom  civilisation   may  be  said 
to    have    originated, — were    led    to    raise    their    eyes 
above    the    special    forms    of    nature    to    the     over- 
arching   heaven,    and     to     seek     in     those    heavenly 
bodies    which    stand    in     general     relations     to     the 
whole    life    of    nature  and    man    for    the    main    em- 
bodiment of  their  idea  of  the  divine.      And  the  same 
\  lifting     of    the     spirit,     which     thus     separated    the 
Leelestial  god  or  gods  from  the  totems  or  family  and 
<  tribal  divinities    of    an    earlier   acre,  awakened  at  the 


256  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RELIGION. 

same  time  the  consciousness  of  a  national  life 
reaching  beyond  the  bonds  of  family  or  tribe.  The 
races  that  thus  literally  raised  their  eyes  and 
their  spirits  to  heaven,  became  the  aristocracy,  the 
conquering  and  civilising  races  of  the  early  world, 
just  because  they  claimed  direct  descent  from,  or 
relationship  to,  natural  powers,  which  were  regarded 
as  universal  in  their  dominion.  The  Vedic  hymns 
preserve  for  us  the  authentic  expression  of  this 
early  phase  of  the  spiritual  life  of  man,  the  poetic 
revelation  of  the  thoughts  and  feelings  of  those  who 
first  recognised  that  they  had  '  a  citizenship  in 
heaven.'  The  proud  sense  of  belonging  to  a  race 
of  higher  birth  and  higher  powers  than  other  races, 
the  fearless  outlook  upon  nature  and  upon  human 
life,  the  freedom  from  grovelling  superstition  and 
the  soaring  strength  of  an  imaginative  sympathy 
which  forces  all  nature  to  become  an  instrument  for 
expressing  the  emotions  of  the  human  soul — these, 
which  are  the  characteristics  of  the  poets  of  the 
Veda,  are  only  the  natural  indications  of  the  in- 
spiring power  of  this  new  idea  upon  a  people  that 
was  fit  to  be  its  recipient.  No  wonder  that,  by  its 
consciousness  of  alliance  with  powers  that  controlled 
all  nature,  the  Aryan  race  was  lifted  above  all 
fear  of  disaster  either  from  envious  gods  or  mortal 
enemies,  and  that  it  carried  into  the  struggle  with 
other  races  an  energy  of  spirit  which  speedily  made 


EARLY  RELIGION  AND  MORALITY.         257 

it  the  first  conqueror  of  India.     Animated   by    such 

a  faith  and  by  the  higher    sense    of   national  unity, 

the  early  Aryans  came  upon  other  races  like  superior 

beings  whom  it  was  useless  to  resist.     We  might  say 

of  them  in  relation   to  other  peoples  what  is  said  of 

Coriolanus  in  relation  to  Eome,  they  took  them 

"  as  the  osprey  does  the  fish, 
By  sovereignty  of  nature." 

Now,  the  principle  of  this  religion  and  morality  is 
the  same  as  that  of  which  we  have  already  spoken. 
Its  social  bond  is  still  a  kinship  of  men  to  men,  based 
on  their  common  kinship  to  a  god  or  gods.  The  gods, 
moreover,  are  still  conceived  as  outward  objects,  and 
the  tie  that  binds  them  to  their  worshippers  is  still 
thought  of  as  a  natural  tie  of  blood.  But  subject  tO; 
these  general  limitations,  it  is  obvious  that  a  great  \ 
advance  has  been  achieved,  and  that  we  have  here 
reached,  at  least  in  one  aspect  of  it,  the  culminating 
point  of  objective  religion.  For  the  objects  selected  for 
worship  are  as  unlimited  as  objects  can  be :  they  are 
objects  to  which  it  is  difficult  to  conceive  any  indi- 
vidual or  race  as  standing  in  an  exclusive  relation. 
And,  indeed,  tlie  very  conception  of  such  an  exclusive 
relation  begins  with  this  religion  to  disappear ;  for  the 
Vedic  hymns  already  trace  all  races  back  to  the  same 
divine  origin,  though  in  various  ways  they  claim  a  more 
/  direct  and  honourable  relation  to  the  divine  power  for 
the  Aryan  race  than  for  any  other.     Again,  as  it  is  an 

VOL.  I.  R 


258  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RELIGION. 

objective  religion,  the  Vedic  religion  is  still  polythe-  V 
istic.  For  not  only  does  it  leave  room  hcnccdh  it  for 
an  undergrowth  of  fanriily  and  gentile  worships,  but 
even  the  unity  of  the  heavenly  power  is  with  it 
broken  into  many  differences ;  and  beside  Varuna,  the 
most  comprehensive  name  under  which  the  divinity  is 
worshipped,  we  have  Mitra,  Agni,  Indra,  and  a  host  of 
forms  which  represent  one  or  other  aspect  of  the  great 
power  of  nature.  But  the  separate  personality  or 
individuality  of  the  gods,  though  it  stands  out  vividly 
in  the  poetic  representation  of  them,  is  yet  very 
easily  thrown  aside  when  it  has  served  its  imme- 
diate purpose.  The  '  many  '  sinks  back  into  the  'one  '; 
or,  by  the  henotheistic  process  to  which  I  have 
already  referred,  each  divinity  in  turn  absorbs  all  the  ^ 
others.  Thus  the  polytheism  of  India  soon  begins  to 
betray  that  pantheism  which  is  latent  in  it,  and  the  \ 
multiplicity  of  gods  yields  to  the  conception  of  one 
universal  Power  which  is  present  in  all  finite  forms 
of  gods  and  men  alike,  which  produces  and  consumes 
them  all  in  turn,  which  through  all  their  variety 
"  spreads  undivided,  operates  unspent,"  and  which 
alone  is,  while  they  only  seem.  The  physical  univer- 
sality of  the  heavens  was  the  stepping-stone  upon-^^^ 
which  the  religious  mind  of  India  rose  to  the  abstract 
universality  of  thought,  the  Absolute  Being  in  which 
everything  else  is  lost.  This  pantheism  is  the  final  | 
outcome     of    polytheism,    the   fatal    gulf   that    must     / 


EARLY  RELIGION  AND  MORALITY.         259 

ultimately  swallow  up  all  merely  objective  religions. 
For  religion,  so  long  as  it  seeks  the  infinite  and  divine 
in  objects  without  us,  must,  time  after  time,  discover 
that  the  objects  it  has  selected  are  finite  and  therefore 
not  divine ;  and  even  when  it  turns  its  eyes  to  the 
all-embracing  heaven,  it  has  to  learn  that  the  '  heaven 
of  heavens  cannot  contain  '  God,  any  more  than  a  river 
or  a  tree,  an  animal  or  a  man.     Eeligion  is,  therefore, 
reduced  to  the  worship  of  an  abstract  infinite  Being, 
in  which  all  that  is  finite  is  submerged  and  lost.      It 
can  save  itself  from  such  a  euthanasia,  such  a  gradual 
loss  of  all  positive  content  or  meaning,  only  by  aban- 
doning the  purely  objective  representation  of  God,  and 
by   recognising   that  in  the  inner  life  of  the  self  or 
subject,  there  is  a  higher  revelation  of  Him  than  can 
be  found  in  any  object  as  such,  or  even  in  the  whole 
world  of  objects. 


LECTUEE  TENTH. 


THE    RELKUON    OF    GREECE. 


The  movement  through  Pantheism  to  Subjective  Religion  in  the 
Upanishads — The  Greek  Phase  of  Objective  Religion — How  its 
Anthropomorphism  mediates  the  Transition  to  Subjective  Re- 
ligion—  That  it  (1)  Hnmaiiises  the  Nature-Powers ;  and  (2) 
Substitutes  a  Relation  to  Man  for  the  Relation  to  Natiire — 
Characteristics  of  Greek  Art — Tendency  to  Unify  Greek 
Polytheism:  (1)  by  setting  Fate  above  the  Gods;  and  (2) 
by  introducing  the  Monotheistic  Idea — Herodotus  and  the 
Tragedians. 

In  the  last  lecture  I  attempted  to  deal  with  the 
general  characteristics  of  what  I  have  called  objective 
religion,  i.e.  the  religion  in  which  God,  who  is  properly 
conceived  as  the  unity  beyond  all  differences,  espe- 
cially the  difference  of  subject  and  object,  is  repre- 
sented as  one  object  among  others.  I  pointed  out 
that,  while  the  object  selected  as  divine  need  not  be 
man,  and  in  the  earliest  times  is  generally  not  man, 
yet  that  object,  whatever  it  be,  is  commonly  regarded 
as  the  ancestor  of  the  family  or  tribe  that  worships 
it ;  because  blood-relationship  is  as  yet  the  only  type 
under  which  the  alliance  of  man  with  man,  and  there- 


THE  RELIGION  OF  GREECE.  261 

fore  also  the  alliance  of  man  with  God,  can  be  con- 
ceived. In  this  way,  the  god  is  viewed  as  an  ancestor 
whose  blood  flows  in  all  the  members  of  a  kinship, 
and  whose  office  is  to  protect  it  against  other  kinships 
and  their  rival  gods.  Such  a  system  is  necessarily 
polytheistic,  in  the  sense  that  it  acknowledges  a  multi- 
plicity of  divine  powers,  who  are  opposed  to  each 
other  as  are  the  kinships  they  protect.  Polytheism,  in 
the  sense  of  the  worship  of  many  gods,  seems  often  to 
arise  by  the  coalescence  of  many  kinships  into  a  wider 
society,  or  by  the  conquest  of  one  kinship  by  another. 
Now  I  pointed  out  that  a  culminating  point  in 
the  development  of  such  polytheism  is  that  in 
y  which  we  have  a  heavenly  god  or  gods  raised  to  a 
position  of  superiority  over  tlie  other  gods.  Such  a 
worship  has  in  many  nations  been  the  indication  of 
the  rise  of  a  wider  national  consciousness.  Of  this 
process  the  sun-worship  of  Peru,  the  heaven- worship  of 
China,  the  Egyptian  worship  of  the  celestial  powers 
I  that  produce  the  vicissitude  of  night  and  day,  summer 
and  winter,  are  different  instances.  But  the  highest 
example  of  it  is  found  in  the  Vedic  hymns,  wherein 
the  early  Aryans  expressed  their  consciousness  of  a 
divinity  which  manifested  itself  in  the  heavenly  and 
elemental  powers,  and  which  also  was  the  source  of 
the  nobler  stream  of  life  that  ran  in  their  own  veins, 
as  contrasted  with  the  other  races  of  India  against 
whom  they  were  fighting. 


262  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RELIGION. 

The  Vedic,  like  the  Egyptian  religion,  was  a  kind  of 
polytheisin ;   for  the   different    heavenly  forms    deified 
were  regarded  as  separate  powers  which  in  a  manner 
supplemented  one  another.      But,  on  the  other  hand, 
the  worship  of  such  powers   itself  carried   with   it  a 
kind  of  physical  suggestion  of  universality  and  unity 
which  was  never  quite  lost  sight  of      The  result  of 
this  was  the  phenomenon  which  Professor  Max  Miiller 
has  called  Henotheism.     Each  divinity  at  the  moment 
of   worship   swells   out   into   a    universal   power   and 
absorbs  all  the  others,  or  again  the  different  divinities 
are  easily  melted  together  into  one  by  a  new   effort 
of    imaginative    construction.       Finally,    as    reflexion 
advances,  this  wavering  and  uncertain  picture  of  '  gods 
many  and  lords  many,'    comes   to  be  regarded   as  a 
mere  show  and  appearance  of  diversity,  in  which  the 
one  infinite  being  masks  himself      The  Indian  mind 
is   never   very  far   from    an   abstract   pantheism,  and 
before  the  Vedic  collection  of  hymns  was  completed, 
it   had   reached  and   expressed   it  with  no  uncertain 
sound.     Thus,  even  at  this  early  date,  objective  religion 
was    attempting    to    escape  from   the   finitude    which 
necessarily  attaches  to  objects,  as  such,  into  the  abyss 
of  a  negative  infinite.    And  the  outward  change  which 
raised    a   priestly  contemplative   caste   above    all   the 
others,  and  especially  above  the  proud  Aryan  warriors 
who  still  held  the  supremacy  in  the  early  Vedic  age, 
was  highly  favourable  to  such  a  transition.      India,  in 


THE  RELIGION  OF  GREECE.  263 

fact,  never  developed  a  higher  social  life  than  that  of 
the  warlike  Aryan  tribes  of  the  Indus;  and  these,  in 
the  progress  of  their  conquests  of  India,  lost  hold  of 
that  national  consciousness  which  was  just  dawning 
among  them  before  they  were  severed  from  each  other. 
And  the  work  of  conquest  itself,  while  it  maintained 
their  superiority  as  a  caste  or  castes  of  nobler  origin, 
produced  no  higher  social  organisation  than  that  of 
an  aggregation  of  subject  tribes  under  a  despotic 
ruler.  For  the  same  reason,  their  polytheism  did  not 
develop  towards  the  comparative  order  of  the  Greek 
pantheon ;  and  the  increasing  anthropomorphism  of 
later  times  brought  with  it  only  an  additional  source 
of  disorder.  Hence  also  the  growing  consciousness  of 
a  unity  beneath  the  multiplicity  of  the  gods  could  only 
take  an  abstract  form,  the  form  of  an  undefined 
Being  or  Substance,  out  of  which  all  was  supposed 
to  come  and  to  which  everything  must  return.  The 
Brahmanic  religion  only  rose  to  a  pantheism  which 
was  an  acosmism,  to  a  unity  which  was  no  principle 
of  order  in  the  manifold  differences  of  things,  but 
merely  a  gulf  in  which  all  difference  was  lost.  And 
the  ethics  which  could  spring  from  such  a  faith  was 
only  the  negative  ethics  of  an  asceticism  which 
renounced  the  world  and  withdrew  from  it  as  an 
/'  empty  illusion.  The  Upanishads,  which  contain  the 
last  philosophic  expression  of  the  Vedic  religion, 
celebrate  in  endless  variety  of  phrase  the  triumph  of 


\^ 


264  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RELIGION. 

the  soul  over  the  objective  woiicl,  which  it  leaves 
behind  in  its  nothingness,  in  order  that  it  may  lose 
itself  in  the  Infinite  Being. 

In  the  Upanishads  we  have  also  another  change, 
the  change  from  objective  to  subjective  religion;  but  of 
that  I  do  not  wish  as  yet  to  speak.  Here  I  wish 
rather  to  deal  with  another  form  of  what  we  may  still 
regard  as  objective  religion,  though,  owing  to  the  char- 
acter of  the  object  which  it  selects  as  divine,  it  is 
1 1  widely  separated  from  most  other  religions  of  this 
'  type.  In  a  sense,  all  the  religions  of  which  we 
have  spoken  are  vaguely  anthropomorphic,  just  because 
they  want  a  consciousness  of  the  distinction  between 
man  and  other  beings.  Greek  religion  also  is  anthro- 
pomorphic, but  it  is  as  with  a  clear  consciousness  of 
that  distinction.  It  is  the  first  religion  which 
definitely  conceives  man  as  the  highest  of  natural 
beings,  and,  because  he  is  the  highest,  regards  his 
nature  as  that  which  is  most  like  to  the  divine.  It  is 
the  first  which  distinctly  levels  nature  up  to  man,  ~ 
instead  of  levelling  man  down  to  nature.  It,  therefore, 
not  only  personifies  the  natural  powers  which  it  lifts  to 
heaven  but  humanises  them.  Starting  from  the  basis 
of  something  like  the  Vedic  worship  of  the  powers 
of  nature,  it  proceeds  to  invest  these  powers  with  a 
complete  human  individuality,  which  sometimes  alto- 
gether conceals  that  basis.  In  the  Vedas  the  heavens, 
the  fire,  the  winds,  the  storm  are  presented  as  deities 


THE  RELIGION  OF  GREECE.  265 

in  vivid  individualised  images,  but  such  individualisa- 
tion  is  only  for  the  moment  of  poetic  vision  :  it  does 
not  hinder  the  power  so  envisaged  from  returning  in 
the  next  moment  into  the  vagueness  of  a  mere  natural 
object,  which  itself  is  easily  merged  in  the  unity  of 
nature.  In  Greece,  on  the  other  hand,  each  aspect  or 
form  of  nature  which  is  grasped  by  the  fancy  of 
mythology,  once  for  all  takes  on  an  individuality, 
which  is  so  definite  and  characteristic  that  it 
seems  to  detach  itself  altogether  from  its  natural 
root.  In  gods  like  Apollo  and  Athene  the  traces 
of  a  naturalistic  origin  remain  only,  like  the  fawn 
ears  of  Donatello  in  Hawthorne's  romance,  as  a 
faint  indication  of  that  out  of  which  they  have  de- 
veloped. In  others,  such  as  Poseidon  or  Pan,  the 
traces  may  be  more  distinct ;  but  all  have  been  to 
a  large  extent  humanised  and  liberated  from  the  bonds 
of  outward  necessity.  This  depression  of  nature  into 
a  subordinate  place,  or,  if  you  like,  this  rise  of  man 
above  nature,  was  the  essential  change  by  which  the 
Greek  genius  broke  away  from  the  original  Aryan 
stock,  and  entered  upon  its  separate  course  of  develop- 
ment ;  and  certain  parts  of  the  Greek  mythology  itself, 
such  as  the  legends  about  the  conquest  of  the  earlier 
gods  by  the  gods  of  Olymjjus,  seem  to  indicate  that 
the  Greeks  themselves  were  not  without  a  conscious- 
ness of  this  change.  Nor  can  we  be  content  to  regard 
such  myths  only  as   glimpses  of  truth   resting   upon 


266  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RELIGION. 

some  half-forgotten  tradition  of  the  past.  Eather,  we 
must  recognise  in  them  the  expression  of  a  contrast 
upon  which  the  Greek  mind  is  continually  dwelling, 
and  which  furnishes  the  great  theme  of  its  mythology. 
The  idea  of  humanity — meaning  by  humanity  the 
peculiar  powers  of  intelligence  and  will  by  which  man 
is  distinguished  from  the  animals — as  victorious  over 
nature,  i.e.  over  brute  force  guided  only  by  instinct  and 
passion — is  a  central  thought  which  reproduces  itself 
in  almost  every  Greek  myth  :  in  the  war  of  the  Olym- 
pians with  the  Titans,  in  the  slaying  of  the  Python  by 
Apollo,  in  the  hunting  of  Artemis,  in  the  labours  of 
Herakles.  In  many  of  these  myths,  indeed,  we  may 
detect  an  original  naturalistic  meaning,  a  solar  or 
elemental  significance ;  but  this,  even  in  the  earliest 
poetry  of  Greece,  has  fallen  altogether  into  the  back- 
ground or  received  a  new  interpretation.  The  progress 
of  the  sun  through  the  twelve  signs  of  the  zodiac  has 
been  lost  in  the  civilising  labours  of  the  hero  who  rids 
the  earth  of  its  monsters ;  and  the  wild  animals  that 
surrounded  the  Ephesian  goddess  of  production  have 
been  changed  into  the  conquered  victims  of  the  "  queen 
and  huntress,  chaste  and  fair."  The  gods  of  Greece 
are  powers  that  make,  perhaps  we  may  not  say  strictly, 
'  for  righteousness,'  but  certainly  for  civilisation.  They 
are  man's  forerunners  in  the  work  of  taming  and  sub-\ 
duing  nature  into  his  servant;  and  it  is  his  glory  that 
he  can  follow  them  in  their  labours.      If  the  Greek 


THE  RELIGION  OF  GREECE.  267 

regards  himself  as  superior  to  the  men  of  other  races, 
it  is  just  because  he  conceives  himself  to  be  specially 
gifted  with  this  ordering  intelligence,  which  does  not 
rush  blindly  to  its  aims,  but  with  wise  self-restraint 
and  subordination  of  impulse,  considers  deliberately 
the  means  whereby  they  are  to  be  attained.  Aristotle, 
when  he  tells  us  that  the  barbarians  have  only  reason 
enough  to  obey  a  rational  authority  which  is  placed 
without  them  in  another,  but  that  the  Greeks  alone 
possess  the  reason  that  can  originate  and  command, 
is  only  expressing  in  a  less  naive  manner  a  thought 
that  is  already  present  to  Homer,  when  he  makes  the 
Greeks  advance  to  battle  in  ordered  and  silent 
ranks  under  wise  commanders  inspired  by  Athene, 
while  the  Trojans  stream  out  in  a  confused  and 
shouting  mob,  driven  forward  by  Ares,  the  god  who  is 
the  embodiment  of  animal  ferocity  and  reckless  passion. 
We  can  detect  two  steps  in  the  process  of  humanis- 
ing which  the  Greek  gods  undergo.  Of  the  first  of 
these  we  have  already  spoken,  and  it  was  in  great 
part  completed  even  at  the  time  of  Homer.  The  gods 
of  Greece,  even  while  they  were  still  conceived  as 
nature-powers,  become  more  and  more  distinctly 
humanised  and  individualised ;  whereas  in  most 
Asiatic  I'eligions  and  particularly  in  the  Vedic  system, 
they  are  only  personified;  and  their  fictitious  person- 
ality easily  melts  away  into  the  natural  power  or 
principle    from    which    for    a    moment    it    has    been 


268  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RELIGION. 

detached  by  the  poetic  effort  after  realisation.  The 
reason  is  that  the  eye  of  the  Asiatic  poet  was  ^ 
really  upon  nature  and  not  upon  man.  He  might, 
indeed,  attribute  human  faculties  and  relationships 
to  the  gods,  but  he  did  not  seek  in  any  further 
way  to  bring  them  near  to  himself  But  the  Greek 
was  not  satisfied  with  this ;  he  sought  to  realise 
every  trait  of  character  and  outward  appearance,  till 
the  god  became  as  definitely  individualised  for  the 
imagination  as  any  earthly  hero.  Indeed,  in  the  clear 
atmosphere  of  the  Homeric  muse,  where  the  heroes 
are  exalted  by  reverence  above  the  ordinary  level  of 
humanity,  and  the  gods  are  drawn  down  towards  it 
by  the  need  for  imaginative  realisation,  the  only 
distinction  left  seems  to  be  the  freedom  of  the 
gods  from  decay  and  death,  from  the  limit  of  mortality 
to  which  the  heroes  are  still  subjected ;  and  even  that 
limit  could  be  crossed,  and  was  supposed  to  have  been 
crossed  in  one  transcendent  instance.  As  Aristotle 
says :  men  become  gods,  ^i  apeTri<s  virep^oXrjv,  by 
transcendent  merit.  "  The  gods  are  immortal  men  \ 
and  men  are  mortal  gods."  If,  therefore,  we  still 
regard  the  Greek  divinities  as  nature-powers,  yet 
this  means  only  that  every  natural  agency  is  ex- 
plained, and,  we  might  even  say,  explained  away,  by 
an  idealised  human  figure,  through  whom  its  obscure  \ 
meaning  is  raised  into  the  articulate  language  of 
human  passion  and  human  will. 


THE  RELIGION  OF  GREECE.  2G9 

And  this  necessarily  goes  along  with  another  change. 
Not  only  are  the  gods  humanised,  but  in  the  case  at 
least  of  many  of  the  most  prominent  figures  of  Greek 
mythology,  the  connexion  of  the  god  with  nature 
becomes  loosened,  and  a  new  connexion  with  human 
life  is  substituted  in  its  place.  The  change  by  which 
the  life  of  the  country,  the  pastoral  and  agricultural 
life,  dependent  on  incalculable  natural  powers  for  its 
success,  becomes  subordinated  to  the  life  of  cities,  with 
/its  artificial  wants  and  resources  and  its  relative  free- 
dom from  the  bondage  of  nature,  hastened  this  new 
development.  Hence  Zeus,  the  god  of  heaven, 
who  in  earlier  times  was  almost  identified  witli  the 
, heaven  itself,  came  to  be  looked  upon  mainly  as  the 
god  of  justice,  the  source  of  all  rightful  order  and 
authority  in  the  state.  Apollo's  connexion  with  the 
outward  light  of  the  sun  fell  into  the  background,  and 
'  he  was  thought  of  mainly  as  the  god  of  poetry  and 
prophecy,  whose  inspiration  must  guide  the  minds  of 
men  when  their  own  wisdom  fails.  Athene,  even  in 
Homer,  has  already  ceased  to  be  the  heavenly  fire, 
the  lightning  which  bursts  from  the  head  of  Zeus,  and 
has  become  the  source  of  that  practical  wisdom,  that 
valour  mixed  with  prudence  and  self-command,  which 
was  to  find  its  real  embodiment  in  the  civic  life  of 
Athens.  The  interests  of  art  and  science,  as  well  as 
of  a  political  and  social  life  which,  for  the  first  time, 
was  based  not  mainly  on  kinship,  but  rather  on  law 


270  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RELIGION. 

and  constitution  had  become  the  absorbing  interests 
of  existence,  and  they  were  therefore  those  with  which 
the  idea  of  the  divine  was  most  closely  associated. 

Now,  in  this  humanising  of  the  gods  there  is  a 
certain  ambiguity  which  deserves  to  be  carefully  con- 
sidered. In  selecting  the  human  form  as  that  which 
is  peculiarly  divine,  the  Greek  might  seem  to  be  doing 
little  more  than  had  been  done  by  those  who  wor- 
shij)ped  'phytonwrpliic  and  zoomorphic  gods,  or  by  those 
who  deified  the  heavens  or  the  sun.  For  the  god  is 
still  identified  with  an  object  which  is  externally 
related  to  other  objects ;  and  so  long  as  this  is  the 
case,  it  seems  of  comparatively  little  importance  ivhat 
object  is  selected.  Thought  is  still  in  that  lowest 
form,  in  which  the  consciousness  of  God  and  the 
consciousness  of  self  are  forced  to  hide  their  real 
characteristics  under  a  sensuous  disguise.  The  spirit- 
ual is  still  presented  in  the  shape  of  the  natural.  \ 
But,  though  this  is  true,  the  selection  of  this  particular  ' 
object  is  a  great  step  toward  the  discovery  of  the  defect 
of  the  whole  objective  way  of  representing  the  things  of 
the  spirit.  For  man  is  a  self,  whether  he  is  aware  of 
the  full  significance  of  being  a  self  or  not.  The  being 
who  knows  may  not  as  yet  be  clearly  distinguished 
from  a  thing  that  is  known  ;  but  still  the  fact  that  he 
is  a  subject  as  well  as  an  object  cannot  but  affect 
the  conception  of  him  as  an  object.  Hence  a  religion 
that   conceives   the   principle  of  unity   in    all    things 


THE  RELIGION  OF  GREECE.  271 

under  the  form  of  man,  is  on  the  way  towards  the 
conception  of  that  principle  as  a  subject,  which  is 
above  all  objects,  and  which  therefore  can  find  its  true 
manifestation  only  in  the  inner  life  of  those  who  are 
subjects  like  itself.  The  Greek  religion  is  thus  placed 
between  the  outward  and  the  inward,  between  objective 
and  subjective  religion.  It  is  unable  to  attain  the 
latter,  because  it  looks  at  man  mainly  as  an  object ;  it 
is  unable  to  be  content  with  the  former,  because  the 
object  it  has  selected  owes  its  distinctive  character  to 
its  being  also  a  subject. 

The  effect  of  this  ambiguous  position  of  the  Greek 
religion    is    to    favour    the    development    of  art    and 
poetry,    and    indeed    to    make    art    and    poetry    the 
highest  expression  of  the  religious  idea.     For  art  and 
poetry  are  the  necessary  expression  of  the  spiritual, 
so  long  as    it    has    to    be    expressed  in  the  form  of 
the    natural,   or   so    long   as   a   consciousness    of   the 
spiritual,    as    separated    from     and     opposed     to    the 
natural,  has   not  yet  arisen.      In  nations  which  have 
not   reached   this   stage,   as    among    the    Indians,  the 
Egyptians,  and  the   Phoenicians,  we    do,  indeed,    find 
a  kind  of  art ;  but  generally  this  art  takes  the  form  of 
a  symbolism,  which  is  sometimes  grotesque  and  extrav- 
agant, or  of  a  mere  magnificence  of  size  and  colour. 
The    builders    of    the    pyramids,    like    those    of    the 
tower  of  Babel,  seemed   to   be    trying    to    reach  the 
infinite  by  adding  finite  to  finite.      And  the  Indians 


272  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RELIGION. 

often  sought,  by  distortions    or   inconsistent  combin- 
ations   of  all  kinds   of  natural   shapes,   to   suggest  a 
meaning    for    which    they    had    as    yet    no    distinct 
word    of    utterance.      The    sphynxes    of    Egypt    and\ 
Assyria   were   efforts   to   find   expression  for  a  secret 
which    seemed     everywhere    to    be     hinted    at,    but 
nowhere  fully   manifested.     But    the    Greek    had    at 
least    discovered   that   the   solution    of  the    riddle  of     ^ 
the  sphynx   lies  in  man    and    in    man  only;   that  in 
the  human    form    divine    the    secret    is    clearly    re- 
vealed which  nature    elsewhere    utters   only  in  dark 
and    mysterious    language.      The    last    word    of    the 
Egyptian  religion  was  the  inscription  on  the  veil    of 
the  goddess    Isis,   '  I   am  that   which   is,    that    whicli 
hath  been,  and  that    which    will    be;    no  man  hath 
lifted  my  veil':  in  other  words,  the  religion  of  Egypt 
ends  with  the  idea  of  a  pantheistic  unity,  in  which    ^ 
all   finite  forms  are   lost,    and    which    is    symbolised      \ 
by     all     but     expressed    by    none    of    them.       The 
G-reek,     on     the     other    hand,    has     discovered    that 
finite    objects    are    not    to    be    set    side    by    side    as 
symbols   of  a   truth    which    cannot   be   revealed,   but 
rather    that    man    is,    as    we    might    express    it    in 
modern   language,   the   last  term   of    an   evolutionary 
series,    in    which    the    meaning    of    all    other    exist- 
ences is  summed  up  and  for   the  first  time  brought 
to  clear  expression.     Man  is  thus,  to  use  a  word  of 
later  Greek  philosophy,   '  the  measure  of  all   things,' 


THE  RELIGION  OF  GREECE.  273 

because  he  is  the  culmination  of  all  things.  Yet, 
as  the  subjective  consciousness,  the  consciousness  of 
the  self  in  its  full  opposition  to  the  not-self,  has 
/  not  yet  made  its  appearance,  man,  though  the  ulti- 
mate term  of  nature,  is  not  yet  conceived  as  in  any 
way  separated  from  nature.  In  him  nature  is  made 
vocal  and  self-conscious,  but  the  consciousness  of 
self  is  not  yet  regarded  as  giving  him  an  inner 
life  of  his  own,  which  in  any  way  cuts  him  off 
from  the  natural  basis  of  his  existence.  He  is  the 
youngest  child  of  nature  upon  whom  her  highest 
favours  have  been  bestowed,  but  he  has  not  yet 
rebelled  against  his  parent,  still  less  does  he  claim 
to  have  a  higher  origin. 

Now  it  is  this  consciousness  that  lifts  the  Greek 
above  the  Asiatic,  frees  him  from  a  superstitious 
reverence  for  powers  alien  to  himself,  and  gives 
him  courage  as  an  artist  to  break  away  from  the 
traditions  of  his  Egyptian  and  Phoenician  teachers. 
The  Greek  artist  frees  himself  at  a  very  early 
period  from,  the  bonds  of  the  conventional  and 
the  grotesque,  from  the  stiffness,  the  lifelessness, 
and  the  bizarre  distortion  of  natural  form,  which 
we  so  often  meet  with  in  the  art  of  the  East ; 
and  he  soon  learns  to  give  to  his  figures  that 
plastic  individuality  and  moving  grace  which  makes 
the    human    form   the    living    expression    of    human 

thought    and    passion.      Yet,    as    he    is    still    in    the 
VOL,  I.  .        s 


274  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RELIGION. 

golden  mean  of  art, — as  he  has  only  discovered  that 
which  lifts  man  above  nature,  but  not  yet  that  \ 
which  lifts  him  above  himself — there  is  no  straining- 
after  the  utterance  of  that  which  can  never  be 
fully  expressed  in  the  form  of  sensuous  perception 
or  imagination.  The  spirit  has  not  yet  outgrown 
its  fleshly  vesture,  or  begun  to  regard  it  as  a  prison 
house.  In  Asiatic  and  Egyptian  art  the  soul  is 
not  yet  sufficiently  awake  completely  to  inform  the 
body :  in  modern  art  it  often 

"  frets  the  puny  body  to  decay, 
And  o'er-informs  the  tenement  of  clay." 

In  Greece  it  is,  as  in  the  crowning  moment  of 
youth,  in  which  soul  and  body  are  in  perfect  balance 
with  each  other  and  with  the  world;  when  pain  and 
disease  have  not  yet  disturbed  the  harmony  of  man 
with  himself  and  with  things,  and  when  the  demands 
of  desire  do  not  yet  seem  to  have  outgrown  the  pos- 
sibilities of  earthly  satisfaction.  In  such  a  time  all 
that  is  needful  for  the  artist  is  to  omit  a  few  disturbing 
features,  to  clear  away  a  few  stains  of  imperfection  and 
finitude,  to  erase  a  few  traces  of  weakness  and  depend- 
ence, in  order  to  exalt  man  into  an  image  of  the  mighty 
gods ;  just  as,  on  the  other  hand,  it  is  only  the  fate 
of  mortality  that  appears  to  separate  him  from  them. 
The  universal,  the  infinite,  the  spiritual,  the  divine,  are 
as  yet  known  only  as  that,  the  whole  import  of  which 
may  be  gathered  up  in  a  single  human  form ;  or,  at 


THE  RELIGION  OF  GREECE.  275 

least,  as  that  which  requires  for  its  expression  only 
that  such  a  form  should  be  generalised,  idealised,  and 
freed  from  the  blemishes  that  cling  to  the  indi- 
vidualised existence  of  particular  men.  It  was  of  this 
that  Goethe  was  thinking  when  he  said  that  the 
characteristic  of  Greek  art  is  Bedcutsamkeit,  or  sig- 
nificance ;  in  other  words,  that  its  products  are  char- 
acteristic forms  from  which  everything  has  been 
removed  that  is  auiorphous,  inorganic  or  accidental, 
everything  that  does  not  go  to  the  expression  of  the 
spirit  of  life  within.  In  like  manner  Greek  religion 
nmv  be  said  to  dwell  in  a  middle  region  of  imagina- 
tion,  lifted  above  the  accidents  of  individual  existence, 
/  yet  not  quite  attaining  to  the  universal.  Or,  to  put  it 
iu  another  way,  its  gods  are  still  represented  as  objects  j 
,  jet  as  objects  of  a  peculiarly  ideal  character  which  do 
not  take  rank  among  ordinary  objects.  But  such  a 
golden  mean  is  difficult,  nay  impossible,  to  maintain;  it 
is  like  the  perfect  blossom  of  youth,  which  is  no  sooner 
reached  than  it  has  begun  to  pass  away.  If  we  speak 
of  (jlreek  religion  in  its  actuality,  we  must  admit  that 
it  existed  only  in  process  to  attain  to  this  point,  and 
that  it  hid  no  sooner  attained  it,  than  it  was  fatally 
carried  beyond  it.  The  Greek  religious  idea  was  thus 
of  an  essentially  transitionary  character — involving  a 
Iviihl  oi  unstable  ei[iiilibrium  between  the  objective  and 
'  i  ^  MiltjecLivc,  the  natural  antl  the  spiritual,  the  par- 
titMilirand  the  universal.    For,  as  man  may  be  regarded 


276  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RELIGION. 

in  two  aspects,  as  an  object  or  as  a  subject;  and  as  he 
cannot  be  considered  in  his  distinction  from  other 
natural  objects  without  the  subjective  aspect  of  his 
being  coming  to  some  extent  into  view,  so  the  selec- 
tion of  him  as  the  objective  embodiment  of  the 
divine  might  be  said  to  be  equivalent  to  placing  the 
religious  consciousness  upon  an  inclined  plane,  on 
which  it  could  not  but  be  gradually  driven  for- 
ward from  objective  to  subjective  religion.  A  few 
remarks  will  be  sufficient  to  show  the  nature  of  this 
movement. 

Greek  religion  springs,  as  we  have  seen,  from  a 
worship  of  the  powers  of  nature,  similar  to  that  which 
we  find  among  the  Aryans  of  northern  India  in  the 
Vedic  period.  But  such  a  worship  is,  as  we  have  also 
seen,  a  Henotheism,  i.e.  it  wavers  between  the  one  and  / 1 
the  many,  between  a  polytheism  and  a  pantheism,  the  1 1 
latter  of  which  gradually  gains  ground  upon  the 
former,  as  the  nation  becomes  more  reflective.  Now, 
something  similar  to  this  happens  also  in  Greece; 
but  it  is  greatly  modified  by  the  anthropomorphic 
character  of  the  Greek  religion,  which  hides  the  ab- 
stract  unity  under  a  multiplicity,  not  of  powers  of 
nature  which  easily  pass  into  each  other,  but  of 
humanised  divinities,  each  of  which  has  all  the  fulness  ^ 
of  a  distinct  individuality,  all  the  riches  of  a  definite 
character.  Gods  like  Zeus,  or  Athene,  or  Hermes  resist 
the  process  of  fusion  which  would  melt  them  into  one 


THE  RELIGION  OF  GREECE.  277 

divine  power,  in  a  niucli  more  stubborn  way  than 
forms  like  Varuna  or  Mitra,  Agni  or  Indra.  The 
humanising  of  the  gods  gives  to  each  of  them  an 
independent    substantiality,    makes    each    of    them   a 

^  whole  in  himself,  a  microcosm  which  will  not  readily 
sink  back  to  be  lost  in  the  macrocosm.  Hence,  when 
the  desire  for  unity  awakes,  Greek  religion  at  first 
seeks  to  satisfy  it  by  the  conception  of  a  monarchi- 
cally  arranged  pantheon,  in  which  the  highest  god  is 

/  not  supreme  or  absolute,  but  has  many  powers 
subordinate  to  him,  to  whom  he  is  obliged  to 
make  partial  concessions.  This  is  the  general 
picture  of  the  Olympian  heaven  which  is  presented 
to  us  in  Homer.  The  primitive  desire  of  the  Greek 
mind  for  order  and  system  was  sufficiently  satis- 
fied by  an  organisation  of  the  heavenly  powers 
similar   to    that   which    existed    on    earth,   in    which 

^  a  king  supported  and  limited  by  a  council  of 
nobles,  ruled,  rather  by  prestige  than  force,  over  a 
generally  submissive  though  sometimes  recalcitrant 
multitude. 

At  the  same  time,  the  genius  of  religion  is  neces- 
sarily at  war  with  this  simple  application  of  the  finite 
relations  of  men  to  the  divine.  The  marked  outlines 
of  character  and  individuality  in  the  Homeric  gods 
were  partly  due  to  the  poet's  effort  to  realise  and 
picture  his  dramatis  2)crsoncc;  and  we  cannot  suppose 
that   the   popular   religion   was    ever   so   distinct  and 


278  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RELIGION. 

definite  in  its  conceptions.  In  fact,  even  in  Homer, 
we  can  see  that  the  gods,  in  what  has  well  been  called 
their  ex  cathedra  functions,  as  givers  of  good  and 
executors  of  justice,  are  not  thought  of  quite  in 
the  same  way  as  when  they  are  taken  as  the 
subjects  of  particular  legends.  Furthermore,  there 
are  already  at  work  two  different  tendencies,  both 
of  which  make  for  unity,  though  their  effects 
cannot  as  yet  be  clearly  distinguished  from  each 
other.  One  of  these  tendencies  gives  rise  to  the 
notion  of  an  abstract  power  of  fate,  to  which 
even  the  gods  are  subjected ;  while  the  other  favours 
an  exaltation  of  Zeus  which  would  make  him 
absorb  all  the  other  divine  powers.  The  former  may 
be  regarded  as  pointing  to  the  abstract  unity  of  pan- 
theism, in  which  all .  the  Vedic  divinities  lose  them- 
selves ;'  while  the  latter  rather  foreshadows  a  mono- 
theistic solution  of  the  difficulty,  as  it  points  to  the 
idea  of  one  great  self-conscious  power  in  which  all  the 
separate  deities  are  merged,  with  the  loss  of  their 
independent  individuality  but  not  of  their  spiritual 
nature. 

Now  the  subsequent  progress  of  the  religious 
thought  of  Greece  lay  just  in  the  development  of 
these  two  tendencies :  first,  in  the  growth  of  tlie 
consciousness  of  a  divine  unity,  which  was  con- 
ceived in  a  very  abstract  way  as  a  fate  or  law  of 
necessity ;    and,    secondly,  in    the    advance  from  this 


THE  RELIGION  OF  GREECE.  279 

abstract  or  pantheistic  unity  to  that  idea  of  spiritual 
principle  which  is  implied  in  monotheism. 

In  the  earlier  period  of  Greek  history,  the  pan- 
theistic unity  tends,  in  literature  at  least,  to  prevail 
over  the  manifold  polytheism  of  the  Homeric  age. 
Herodotus  often  prefers  to  speak  of  the  divine  power 
in  an  impersonal  way,  and  to  treat  it  as  practically 
identical   with    a    Nemesis,    or  fate,    which    manifests 

y  itself  mainly  in  keeping  finite  beings  within  the 
limits  of  their  finitude,  and  in  bringing  back  their 
transitory  existence  in  a  few  years  to  the  nothing- 
ness from  which  it  has  emerged.  And,  though  it 
may  be  true  that  in  Herodotus  there  are  occasional 
hints  at  the  moral  lesson  that  pride  goes  before 
a  fall,  yet  it  cannot  be  said  that  in  his  general 
conception  of  the  limits  set  to  humanity  there 
is  any  distinct  idea  of  a  moral  necessity.  When 
he  expresses  it  personally,  what  he  speaks  of  is 
the  "  envy  of  the  gods "  that  "  will  not  permit 
anyone  to  be  wanton,  but  themselves " ;  and  we 
can  only  escape  attributing  to  him  all  the  super- 
stitious consequences  of  this  conception  by  regarding 
it  simply  as  a  poetic  expression  for  the  limitation 
that  necessarily  clings  to  finitude.  Taken  in  this 
sense,  we  might  perhaps  treat  it  as  a  popular 
equivalent  for  the  language  of  the  philosopher  Hera- 
clitus,   who   declares   that   the   one    permanent   thing 

/     in  the   world   is  the  law  of  change  under  which   no 


280  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RELIGION. 

tinite  thing  remains  for  two  moments  the  same.  On 
this  view  the  passing  away  of  the  finite  is  no 
external  destiny  forced  upon  it  by  unpropitious 
powers.  The  finite  exists  only  as  it  passes  away, 
and  the  more  desperately  and  proudly  it  tries  to 
assert  itself  against  the  law  of  mortality,  the  quicker 
is  the  recoil  of  its  doom  upon  it.  "  If  the  sun 
transgressed  its  paths,  the  Erinyes  would  drag  him 
back." 

Now,  it  is  this  thought  that  supplies  the  basis  from 
which  Greek  tragedy  starts.  If  we  compare  Homer  ^ 
with  the  Tragedians,  we  see  that  in  the  interval  a 
chilling  sense  of  the  limits  of  mortality  has  fallen 
upon  the  Greek  mind.  The  dark  shadow,  which  in 
the  former  is  hidden  by  the  force  and  variety  of  the 
life  that  occupies  the  foreground  of  the  picture,  has 
begun  to  reveal  itself  more  clearly.  The  bright  play 
of  mythology  is  now  seen  to  have  an  iron  heart.  The 
varied  picture  of  the  action  and  reaction,  of  the 
victories  and  defeats  of  free  individualities,  human  and  \ 
divine,  is  but  a  mask  on  the  stern  face  of  necessity. 
What  must  be,  must  be,  is  the  end  of  all.  There  is 
no  pleading  with  fate  and  no  final  reconciliation  that 
reaches  beyond  it.  Necessity  is  hidden  even  in  the 
acts  that  seek  to  overcome  or  evade  it ;  and  often,  as 
in  the  story  of  Oedipus,  by  a  kind  of  irony  of  destiny, 
the  struggles  of  the  victim  are  turned  into  the  means 
of  bringing  about  the  very  doom   they  would   avert. 


THE  RELIGION  OF  GREECE.  281 

The  only  deliverance  for  the  soul  is  in  the  hopeless 
fearless  heroism  which  simply  accepts  its  fate,  and  by 
a  final  effort  of  resignation  detaches  itself  from 
all  the  interests  that  fate  has  assailed.  In  such 
a  view  there  is  no  consolation  nor  hope ;  but  the 
/  heroic  spirit  can  do  without  either.  The  hero  can 
accept  his  doom,  not,  like  the  monotheist,  as  the 
decree  of  a  righteous  and  irresistible  will ;  nor,  like 
the  Christian,  as  the  manifestation  of  an  absolute 
spiritual  power  which  has  in  itself  the  cure  for 
every  wound  which  it  inflicts ;  but  simply  as  necessity, 
with  which  it  is  useless,  and  therefore  degrading, 
to  strive.^ 

At  the  same  time,  while  this  is  the  general  basis 
or  presupposition  of  Greek  tragedy,  we  can  trace  in 
it  the  growth  of  other  ideas  which  were  ultimately 
to  triumph  over  it,  if  not  in  the  religion,  at  least 
in  the  philosophy  of  Greece.  What  Aeschylus  and 
Sophocles  put  upon  the  stage  is  not  simply  the  vain 
attempt  of  mortal  men  to  escape  the  fate  of  mor- 
tality, the  effort  of  finite  wills  to  claim  more  than 
is  allowed  to  finitude,  and  the  consequent  recoil  of 
their  destiny  upon  them.  Nor  is  it  even  the  simple 
moral  lesson  that  excess  and  insolence  bring  retri- 
bution  upon  themselves.  It  is  rather  the  tragic 
collision  of  interests,  each  of  which  has  a  real  moral 
basis  and  a  claim  to  its  own  place  in  life ;  but 
iCf.  Hegel,  xii.  132  ;  vi.  295. 


/ 


282  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RELIGION. 

which  is  driven  to  assert  that  claim  in  opposition 
to  other  interests,  which  also  have  their  own  legiti- 
mate place,  their  own  ethical  basis.  The  tragic 
conflict  is  not  between  right  and  wrong,  but  be- 
tween right  and  right.^  When  Prometheus  rebels 
against  Zeus,  when  the  Eumenides  claim  as  their 
victim  the  divinely  missioned  servant  of  Apollo,  this, 
as  Aeschylus  saw,  is  no  contest  in  which  all  the 
pleas  of  justice  are  on  one  side  ;  it  is  a  struggle  of 
mighty  spiritual  powers,  the  absolute  destruction  of 
either  of  which  would  bring  ruin  to  the  ethical  life 
of  man.  And  the  work  of  fate  is,  therefore,  after 
many  sacrifices  of  the  individuals  who  have  wronged 
either  interest,  to  bring  about  a  healing  compromise, 
in  which  the  lower  right  shall  take  its  place  beside, 
but  subordinate  to,  the  higher.  Prometheus  has  to 
reveal  his  secret,  and  to  save  the  monarchy  of  a  Zeus 
who  has  become  just  and  reconciled  to  men.  The 
Eumenides,  the  old  gods  that  watch  over  the  sanctity 
of  the  family  bond,  must  yield  to  the  higher  claims  \ 
of  the  gods  of  the  state ;  but,  at  the  same  time, 
they  must  find  a  temple  near  the  Areopagus,  the 
seat  of  the  court  which  has  freed  their  victim 
from  his  guilt.  In  Sophocles  this  equipoise  is  less 
definitely  kept  up.  He,  perhaps  owing  to  a  deeper 
ethical  consciousness,  rejects  the  Aeschylean  com- 
promises in  moral  conflicts,  and  lets  the  opposite 
^Cf.  Hegel,  ii.  321  seq. 


THE  RELIGION  OF  GREECE.  285 

rights  fight  it  out  to  the  bitter  end ;  but  he 
still  more  definitely  emphasises  the  lesson  that 
the  confiict  is  a  moral  one.  And  his  last  word, 
in  Oedipus  Coloneus,  is  to  distinguish  between  the 
outward  act  of  him  who,  in  following  out  one  legiti- 
mate interest  has  been  led  unconsciously  into  the 
violation  of  another,  from  his  inward  character. 
Such  an  one  the  gods  at  last  save  as  by  fire  in  a 
divine  deliverance,  though  only  after  he  has  suffered 
the  consequences  of  his  unlawful  act.  Destiny  thus 
becomes  a  moral  law,  which  permits  the  individual 
who  has,  however  unwittingly,  violated  a  moral  in- 
terest, to  suffer  for  his  wrong ;  but  which  at  the 
last  allows  a  deeper  voice  of  divine  justice  to  be 
heard,  a  voice  which  regards  not  his  act  but  his 
will.  The  subjective  claim  of  right  is  thus  be- 
ginning to  interfere,  even  in  Sophocles,  with  the 
purely  objective  demands  of  the  law. 

Finally,  in  Euripides  this  subjective  element  be- 
comes so  prominent  that  the  idea  of  an  external 
law  of  destiny  seems  to  be  all  but  lost.  The  out- 
ward world  is  left  to  a  capricious  power  sometimes 
called  fate,  but  often  and  more  appropriately,  chance ; 
it  is  regarded  as  a  medley  in  which  it  is  difficult 
to  discern  either  a  law  of  necessity  or  a  divine  pur- 
pose ;  as  the  outward  play  of  romantic  accident  which 
has  its  main  interest  in  the  fact  that  it  somehow 
stirs   into    activity    the    inward    play   of   thought    and 


284;  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RELIGION. 

feeling.^  The  divine  voice  is  now  heard,  if  at  all, 
only  in  the  inner  oracle  of  the  heart ;  and  the  real 
tragedy,  the  real  victories  and  defeats,  are  those 
that  are  won  or  lost  by  the  soul  in  its  struggles 
with  itself.  Euripides  is  a  rationalist  and  a  sceptic, 
not  only  as  regards  the  deities  of  mythology,  but  in 
the  sense  that  he  has  learnt  to  doubt  the  existence 
of  any  divine  power  manifested  in  the  outward  world. 
But,  in  place  of  belief  in  a  God  without,  he  substi- 
tutes for  it  a  faith  in  the  God  within,  which  contains 
the  promise  of  a  new  religion.  Hence  if  Euripides 
is  the  least  perfect  of  the  Greek  dramatic  artists, 
it  is  partly  at  least  because  he  is  inspired  with  a 
new  idea,  which  is  inconsistent  with  the  principle 
upon  which  the  Greek  drama  rested.  The  grand 
outward  balance  of  destiny,  which  Aeschylus  and 
Sophocles  tried  to  represent,  loses  its  interest  for  a 
poet  whose  eye  is  turned  almost  exclusively  upon 
the  inner  struggle  that  rends  the  heart  of  a  Medea 
or  a  Phaedra ;  and  the  only  solution  for  which  he 
really  cares  is,  not  the  outward  Aeschylean  judgment 
that  places  the  temple  of  the  Eumenides  beside  the 
temple  of  Athene,  but  the  victory  over  self  achieved 
1  Cf.  e.g.  Hecuba,  957  : 

OuK  eCTTtV  OTjSeV  TTtCTTOV  OVT    €v5o^La 

OiV  a^  KaAws  Trpda-crovTa  fxr]  Trpd^eiv  kuku)^. 
^vpovcTL  8'  avTo.  deol  TraAtv  re  /cat  irpocrWj 
'Tapay/xuv  evTiOevTes,  ws  dyvwcrla 
2e/iw/xev  avrovs. 


\ 


THE  RELIGION  OF  GREECE.  285 

by  an  Alcestis  or  a  Makaria.  In  Euripides  we  see 
already  the  dawn  of  the  new  modern  tragedy,  in 
which  the  inner  predominates  over  the  outer  life, 
and  each  one's  fate  is  simply  the  evolution  of  his 
/  own  soul, — the  tragedy  of  which  we  find  the  highest 
types  in  Shakespeare. 


LECTUEE    ELEVENTH. 

THE  FUNCTION  OF  THE  IMAGINATION  IN  THE  DEVELOPMENT 
OF  OBJECTIVE  EELIGION. 

Poetry  as  the  Expression  of  Moral  and  Religious  Truth  in  Homer 
.  Idealising  Poiver  of  Imagination  in  Mythology — Plato's  View 
as  to  its  ^^ Noble  Untruth'" — How  Rationalism  destroys  it — The 
Greek  Enlightenment  and  Plato's  View  of  it —  The  Modern  En- 
lightenment— General  Character  of  its  Conception  of  Reality — 
Necessity  of  its  Victory,  and  its  Effect  upon  Religion — Deism  as 
a  Religion — Possibility  of  a  Compromise  between  Scientific 
Truth  and  Poetic  Fiction. 

In  the  preceding  lecture  we  were  considering  objec- 
tive religion  in  the  Greek  form,  in  which  man  is 
selected  as  the  object  which  is  to  be  regarded  as 
kindred  with  and  capable  of  representing  the  divine. 
In  this  religion  the  gods  are  not  merely  personified 
but  humanised,  and  all  nature  is  interpreted  as  the 
manifestation  of  beings  like  men,  though  lifted  in 
wisdom  and  power  above  ordinary  men,  and  freed  from 
decay  and  death  and  all  the  accidents  of  mortality. 
At  the  same  time  we  have  to  remember  that  man  is 
here  conceived  rather  as  an  object  than  as  a  subject, 


\ 


POETRY  AND  TRUTH.  287 

as   the    highest   of  natural   beings   but   still    natural. 
Hence  we  are  still  in  the  region  of  naturalistic  poly- 
theism   and    not    of    spiritual    monotheism.      In    the 
progress    of    Greek    thought,    however,    advances    are 
steadily  made  towards  this  higher  conception.     For,  in 
the  first  place,  the  dawning  reflexion  of  Greece  seeking 
for  unity,  finds  satisfaction  for  a  time  in  the  idea  of 
I  a  fate — or  law  of  necessity — to  which  even  the  gods 
I  are  subjected;   and   then,  in  the   second   place,  by  a 
movement  of  thought  which  we  trace  in  Greek  poetry, 
y  and  especially  in  Greek  dramatic  poetry,  this  law  of 
necessity  is  reinterpreted  as  a  moral  law  of  freedom, 
and   the  supreme  power  of  the  universe  is  conceived 
not  as  a  fate  but  as  a  providence. 

I  shall  not  in  the  present  lecture  attempt  to  follow 
this  process  any  farther,  as  I  wish  in  the  first  instance 
to  illustrate  another  aspect  of  the  advance  from  the 
natural   to  the  spiritual,   viz.   the  way  in   which    thei 
poetic    imagination    gradually   fills    the    objects    wor-'  I 
shipped,  even  while  they  are  still  conceived  as  mere 
objective  beings  which  take  their  place  among  other 
objects  with  a  higher  spiritual  meaning.      In  doing  so, 
we  may  still  take  an  illustration  of  the  process  from 
Greece ;    for    Greece,  better  than  any  other    country, 
shows  us  how  far  the  poetic  imagination  can  by  itself 
solve  the  problem  of  the  opposition  and  re-union  of 
the  ideal  and  the  real ;   how  far  it  can  separate  the 
religious  from  the  secular  consciousness,  and  use  the 


288  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RELIGION. 

former  to  elevate  the  latter.  In  the  poems  of  Homer, 
we  have  an  almost  perfect  instance  of  the  way  in 
which,  and  the  extent  to  which,  this  process  may  be 
effected ;  in  other  words,  how  objects  may  be  kept  as 
objects  within  the  forms  of  the  sensuous  consciousness,  \ 
and  yet  filled  with  a  meaning  which  is  not  sensuous. 
With  Homer,  the  whole  picture  of  heaven  and  earth 
remains  still  in  the  simple  naturalistic  form.  We 
never  from  him  hear  of  anything  but  particular  objects 
and  events,  subject  to  all  the  ordinary  conditions  of 
space  and  time.  Nothing  is  told  us  which  might  not 
have  been  seen,  or,  at  least,  nothing  which  cannot  be 
pictured  under  the  conditions  of  sense.  Yet  in  the 
hands  of  Homer  the  actions  narrated  in  the  poem 
somehow  get  a  wider  meaning,  and  become  sug- 
gestions or  symbols  of  something  more  than  them- 
selves. By  the  unerring  tact  of  the  poet,  the  objects 
and  events  are  cleared  of  accidental  elements,  and 
so  presented  that  they  are  hardly  to  be  thought  of 
except  as  types,  i.e.  as  particulars  which  concentrate 
in  themselves  the  meaning  of  a  whole  class  of  objects 
and  events.  This  instinctive  selection  of  the  poet 
is,  in  its  way,  as  enlightening  as  the  scientific  man's 
deliberate  and  conscious  selection  of  just  those  circum- 
stances that  throw  light  upon  a  hitherto  hidden  law 
of  nature.  The  poet,  however,  secures  his  end  not  \ 
by  generalising,  but,  more  simply  and  directly,  by 
representing  the  powers  of  nature  and  the  principles  I 


POETRY  AND  TRUTH.  289 

of  action  within  us  as  embodied  in  particular  divine 
beings,  who  are  constantly  interfering  with  the  fates 
and  actions  of  men,  and  guiding  them  to  the  catas- 
trophe which  is  their  fit  result.  So  definitely  is  this 
idea  carried  out  in  the  Homeric  poems,  that  to  modern 
readers  it  often  seems  as  if  all  the  merit  or  demerit  of| 
the  actions  of  the  heroes  were  taken  away  by 
the  support  or  hindrance  they  receive  from  above. 
Men  seem  to  be  reduced  to  mere  puppets  with 
which  the  gods  play.  For  all  that  men  do  is, 
according  to  the  poet,  done  by  the  god ;  who  not 
only  excites  and  takes  away  their  courage,  fills  their 
breasts  with  resolve  or  panic  terror,  but  even  directs 
or  turns  aside  their  weapons  in  battle.  In  truth, 
this  reduplication  of  agency,  as  we  may  call  it,  was 
necessary  for  Homer ;  he  had  no  other  way  of 
bringing  before  us  the  universal  or  divine  power, 
except  as  another  particular.  He  could  not  represent 
to  us  the  ideal  forces  that  rule  man's  life,  except 
in  the  shape  of  other  beings  lihe  men,  who  directly 
interfered  with  his  actions  or  their  effects.  As  the 
spiritual  world  was  only  conceivable  to  him  as  another 
natural  world,  there  was  no  way  left  for  him  to 
explain  their  relations  except  this  method  of  redupli- 
cation ;  he  is  compelled,  first,  to  separate  human  and 
divine  as  two  independent  realities,  and  then  to 
represent  the  action  of  the  latter  upon  the  former  as  a 
direct  outward  interference.      In  this  way  the  deeds 

VOL.  I.  T 


290  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RELIGION. 

done  come  to  be  attributed,  sometimes  to  men,  some- 
times to  the  gods,  and  sometimes  to  men  and  gods 
working  together.  Homer  could  neither  conceal  this 
difficulty  nor  solve  it :  he  had  no  abstract  language  in 
which  the  universal  powers  of  life  could  be  described 
apart  from  their  special  manifestations.  If  he  assigned 
any  reality  to  the  former,  he  was  obliged  to  bring 
them  together  on  the  same  plane  with  the  latter, 
as  particular  finite  objects.  It  would  be  easy 
to  illustrate  from  the  Iliad  the  necessity  under 
/which  Homer  thus  lay,  of  finding  a  direct  sensuous 
[/expression  for  every  spiritual  fact  which  he 
H  wished  to  express.  In  the  first  book  the  self- 
restraint  of  Achilles  is  attributed  to  the  goddess 
Athene,  the  goddess  representing  practical  wisdom, 
who  comes  behind  and  pulls  the  hero  by  the  hair, 
when  he  is  on  the  point  of  drawing  his  sword  against 
Agamemnon.  A  more  poetic  example  may  be  found 
in  a  later  passage  in  which  Homer  represents  the 
healing  virtue  of  prayer  embodied  in  certain  divine 
forms,  the  Virgin  daughters  of  Zeus,  who,  with  slow 
feet  pursue  AU,  the  goddess  who  represents  the 
fatal  blindness  of  passion,  and  seek  to  undo  the 
evil  she  has  done.  "  Prayers  are  the  daughters  of 
great  Zeus :  lame  are  they  and  withered  and  short  of 
sight,  and  with  anxious  heed  they  follow  the  steps  of 
Ate.  But  Ate  is  strong  and  swift  of  foot  so  that  she 
far  outstrips  them  all  as   she  rushes  over  the  land  ; 


POETRY  AND  TRUTH.  291 

and  they  come  slowly  after  to  heal  the  wounds  she 
has  made."  If  Goethe,  after  all  the  modern  work  of 
reflexion,  could  say  that  anything  that  gave  him  joy 
or  pain  tended  to  change  itself  into  an  image,  and 
that  it  was  only  in  this  way  that  he  could  come  to 
a  definite  understanding  of  its  nature  and  its  influence 
upon  himself,  how  mucli  more  must  this  have  held 
good  in  the  case  of  Homer,  who  lived  when  as  yet 
there  was  no  language  available  for  the  expression  of 
human  thought,  except  the  language  of  immediate 
perception. 

Xow,  we  are  apt  to  take  language  like  that  of 
the  passage  I  have  quoted  as  metaphorical  or  alle- 
gorical. And,  in  a  certain  sense,  it  is  so ;  for 
something  more  is  suggested  by  it  than  is  expressed. 
But  it  is  scarcely  necessary  to  say  we  have  not  here 
a  case  of  conscious  metaphor  or  allegory.  The  poet 
did  not  first  set  before  him  a  general  idea  of  a 
^  /spiritual  principle  ;  and  then  proceed  to  clothe  it  in 
.  \^  a  materialised  symbol.  This  would  be  an  inadequate 
account  of  poetry  at  any  time,  and  specially  inadequate 
as  an  account  of  the  poetry  of  an  age  in  which  poetry 
was  hardly  separated  from  the  prose  of  fact,  and 
in  which  the  prose  of  abstract  thought  had  not 
yet  been  invented.  True  poetry  is  never  the  com- 
bination of  an  idea  and  a  picture,  as  separate 
elements ;  for  in  it  the  one  exists  only  through 
/    the   other.      A   metaphor    is   a   naked  thought  which 


292  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RELIGION. 

puts  on  a  sensuous  form  as  an  external  dress.  A 
poetic  symbol  is  the  living  flesh  and  blood,  the 
organic  body,  in  which  an  idea  must  be  clothed  in 
order  to  manifest  and  realise  itself.  Hence  the 
true  poet  only  grasps  his  idea  as  he  embodies  it, 
and  embodies  it  as  he  grasps  it.  He  thinks  in  ex- 
pressing his  thought,  and  it  is  only  in  finding  \ 
the  word  or  the  form  that  he  wants,  that  he  dis- 
covers what  he  himself  was  trying  to  express. 
'While  he  is  musing,  the  fire  burns,'  and  he 
'  speaks  with  his  tongue,'  realising  what  he  means 
just  in  the  act  of  creating  the  objective  picture 
or  image  which  is  its  expression.  In  a  later  age, 
indeed,  it  is  difficult  for  the  poet  to  have  such 
unity  of  consciousness:  he  is  too  much  affected  by 
the  divisions  of  reflexion  to  forget  the  opposition  of 
the  real  and  the  ideal,  of  the  thought  and  the  ex- 
pression, of  the  universal  and  the  particular,  and  hence 
he  often  falls  into  the  lower  region  of  conscious  alle- 
gory and  invented  metaphor.  'The  native  hues' 
of  his  imagination  '  are  sicklied  o'er  with  the  pale 
cast  of  thought.'  But  in  the  Homeric  age  this 
difficulty  did  not  exist.  Man  had  not  yet  found 
his  way  into  the  region  of  abstraction,  and  there- 
fore he  had  not  to  spend  any  of  his  poetic 
strength  in  escaping  from  it.  He  had  no  feeling  of 
the  impossibility  of  confining  a  general  principle  to  one 
particular  form,  to  trouble   him  in  his  effort  to   find 


POETRY  AND  TRUTH.  293 

such  a  form   and   to   realise   fully  the  form   he    had 
selected. 

When  Plato  spoke  of  poetry  as  a  '  noble  un- 
/  truth,'  false  in  form,  true  in  essence,  he  showed 
the  rise  of  a  consciousness,  for  which  the  poetic  | 
expression  of  truth  had  ceased  to  be  adequate, — j 
a  consciousness  which  could  no  longer  be  content 
)  to  treat  the  universal  principle,  which  is  the  prin- 
ciple of  unity  in  many  particulars,  as  if  it  were 
merely  one  of  their  number.  And  this  advance 
was  a  necessary  one.  The  imaginative  identification  ' 
of  the  ideal  and  real,  the  spiritual  and  the  natural, 
the  universal  and  the  particular,  must  inevitably 
^,yield  in  time  to  a  perception  of  their  difference, 
and  even  to  an  exaggeration  of  their  opposition. 
The  fair  unity  of  poetry,  in  which  fact  and 
thought  are  blended  together,  must  be  broken  up 
into  the  prosaic  consciousness  of  fact  on  the  one 
side,  and  the  prosaic  consciousness  of  law  on  the 
other.  But  the  necessity  of  this  change,  by  which 
mythology  must  ultimately  be  destroyed,  should  not 
prevent  us  from  recognising  the  immense  value  of 
that  idealisation  of  common  phenomenal  reality,  by 
which  it  was  made  to  express  a  divine  meaning ;  the 
importance  of  that  sensuous  realisation  of  the  divine 
by  which  it  was  first  introduced  into  the  natural 
world.  Ideas,  it  has  been  said,  '  must  be  given 
through  something,'  and,  in  an  early  age,  that  some- 


294  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RELIGION. 

tiling  must  be  a  sensible  object  in  space  and  time. 
The  first  poets  or  prophets,  for  they  are  both  in 
one,  unable  to  comprehend  what  manner  of  reality 
the  spirit  that  was  in  them  '  did  signify,'  caught 
directly  at  any  distinct  form  of  nature  or  humanity 
that  seemed  to  furnish  an  expression  for  it,  and 
proceeded  at  once  to  identify  this  form  with  the 
divine  presence  which  haunted  them.  Or,  on  the 
other  hand,  starting  with  a  mythic  form  which  they 
had  received  by  tradition  from  an  earlier  time,  they 
were  led,  by  a  poetic  instinct  of  fitness,  gradually 
to  remove  from  it  the  features  which  were  incon- 
sistent with  their  growing  idea  of  the  divine ;  to 
strip  it,  so  far  as  possible,  of  the  finite  limitations 
which  were  not  in  harmony  with  the  thought  it  had 
to  express;  to  give  it,  in  short,  the  unity  and  com- 
pleteness of  an  ideal  figure  free  from  all  mortal 
stain  or  change.  They  thus,  in  the  only  way  then 
available,  at  once  revealed  and  solved  the  problems 
of  man's  spiritual  being,  deepened  the  consciousness 
of  the  opposition  between  his  natural  life  and  its 
divine  ideal,  and  made  that  ideal  a  living  presence 
in  the  natural  world.  They  did  not  rend  the  veil 
of  sense  but  they  made  it  transparent,  like  a  garment 
which  expresses,  while  it  conceals,  the  form  and 
action  of  the  wearer.  If,  then,  they  clung  to  the 
outward  and  sensible,  yet  by  poetic  selections  and 
rejections  they  carried  it  up  to  a  quintessential  form, 


POETRY  AND  TRUTH.  295 

in  which,  to  adopt  a  phrase  of  Burke,  it  lost  "  ahnost 
all "  its  inadequacy  "  in  losing  half  its  grossness." 
Thus,  when  the  Indian  poet  makes  the  god  to  say, 
"  I  am  the  sun  among  fires,  I  am  the  Ganges  among 
rivers,   among   mountains   I   am   the   Himalayas,"   by 

/  this  selection  of  typical  forms  he  is  exemplifying  the 
principles  of  the  imaginative  expression  of  higher 
truth ;  he  is  illustrating  that  re-constitution  and, 
as  it  might  be  called,  that  transfiguration  of  the 
sensible  by  which  poetry  and  art  turn  it  into  the 
revelation  of  ideas  which  cannot  thus  be  adequately 
revealed,  but  which,  in  the  first  instance  at  least, 
cannot  otherwise  be  revealed  at  all. 

It    appears    then    that,    while    in    our    first    con- 
sciousness   of    the    divine,    it    must    take    the    form 

/^of  an  object  like  other  objects,  of  a  natural  exist- 
ence among  other  natural  existences,  the  content  of 
this  consciousness  is  from  the  first  in  rebellion  against 
the  form.  And  the  way  in  which  this  rebellion 
shows  itself  is  by  the  imaginative  exaltation  of 
the  object  or  objects  selected  above  all  others. 
Thus  certain  particular  existences  are  freed  from 
the   limitations    of  ordinary   reality,   and  transformed 

Z'  or  transfigured,  till  they  become  symbols  for  uni- 
versal powers  or  principles.  The  finite  and  the  in- 
finite begin  to  be  opposed  as  natural  and  super- 
natural, though  both  are  still  included  within  the 
limits    and    conditions   of   the    sensible,   or,   at    least, 


lerAl 
igh|\ 


296  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RELIGION. 

the  sensuously  imaginable  world.  Thus,  in  Homer/ 
gods  and  men  are  separated  by  a  wide  gulf,  thouf 
both  in  their  way  enter  into  the  same  conflicts  and 
contend  with  almost  the  same  weapons.  The  world 
of  mortals  is  at  once  divided  from  the  world  of  the 
immortals,  and  elevated  by  relation  to  it ;  yet  the 
immortals  themselves  are  after  all  still  subjected  to  V 
the  same  general  conditions,  and  are  therefore  only 
to  be  called  relatively  innnortal.  For  the  imagination, 
though  it  rises  above  the  world  of  sense,  never,  so  \ 
to  speak,  gets  beyond  the  reach  of  its  attraction,  and 
it  must  inevitably  return  to  it  in  the  end.  Hence 
its  creations  can  never  be  a  final  satisfaction  to  the 
religious  consciousness,  which  is  too  much  in  earnest 
for  the  bright  play  of  art,  and  grasps  the  flower  of 
poetic  fiction  too  violently  to  spare  its  bloom. 

An  advance  beyond  this  stage  of  the  religious  con- 
sciousness is  therefore  necessary.  Poetry,  indeed, 
never  dies,  because  the  universal  is  always  revealed 
in  the  particular,  and  it  can  be  realised  by  the 
imagination  only  under  the  form  of  the  particular. 
But  the  age  when  poetry  is  truth,  and,  in  relation 
to  the  things  of  the  spirit,  the  only  possible  truth, 
must  yield  to  the  age  when  it  is  discerned,  as  by 
Plato,  to  be  only  a  '  noble  untruth,'  a  truth  of  idea 
which  is  untruth  of  fact.  The  discord  of  the  form 
with  the  matter  of  poetry  must  in  the  long  run 
become  explicit,  and  must  lead  to  a  revolt  against  the 


V 


POETRY  AND  TRUTH.  297 

former  in  the  interest  of  the  latter,  A  Homer  may 
with  infinite  tact  disguise  the  crude  nature  of  the 
myths  with  which  he  works,  but  he  cannot  altogether 
overcome  a  difficulty  that  lies  in  the  very  nature  of 
his  materials.  And  his  very  success  in  elevating  and 
almost  transubstantiating  the  sensible,  is  apt  to 
awaken  a  spirit  that  will  not  be  satisfied,  till  it  is 
allowed  to  see  the  truth  without  any  sensuous  dis- 
guise. When  the  veil  becomes  all  but  transparent, 
the  hand  will  soon  be  stretched  out  to  thrust  it  aside, 
that  the  dimly  seen  forms  behind  may  be  brought  to 
light.  It  is  inevitable  also  that,  when  truth  is^ 
symbolically  expressed,  the  letter  of  the  symbol  should 
ultimately  interfere  with  the  spirit  of  it.  As  it  comes  J 
warm  and  fresh  from  the  lips  of  the  poet,  it  may  be 
the  necessary  embodiment  of  the  truth  it  expresses :  it 
may  carry  with  it  its  own  interpretation  to  those  who 
first  hear  it,  and  who  are  at  the  same  time  infected 
with  the  feeling  in  which  it  is  uttered.  But,  as  it  is 
handed  down  to  others,  and  repeated  again  and  again 
by  those  who  are  not  in  the  same  attitude  of  mind,  its 
power  and  meaning  evaporate :  it  is  taken  literally, 
and  therefore  wrongly.  Its  '  rhetoric,'  or,  as  we  should 
rather  say,  its  poetry,  gets  '  turned  into  logic'  The 
natural  understanding  is  set  to  interpret  the  words  of 
/  inspiration,  and  it  finds  in  them  nothing  but  contra- 
diction. That  which  was  unessential  in  the  myth, 
that   which   made    it   partly   inadequate,  is   taken   as 


298  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RELIGION. 

equally   important  with  that   which  gave  it  its   sug- 
gestive value.     The  material  analogy,  under  which  the 
spiritual  truth  '  half  conceals  and  half  reveals '  itself, 
is  taken  as  identity,  with  the  necessary  consequence, 
on  the  one  side,  that  the  spiritual  is  lowered  to  the 
natural,  and,  on  the  other  side,  that,  just  because  of 
this  lowering,  belief  in  the  spiritual  disappears.    Super- 
stition, bowing   down  before  an  idol,  just  as  an  idol, 
provokes  the  unbelief  which  refuses  to  worship  even-^ 
the  god.     And  the  rationalism,  which  begins  by  point-   1  j 
ing  out  that  the  myth  is  not  true  as  the  expression  of 
a  simple  fact,  ends  in  the  denial  that  there  can  ever  be   ^ 
anything  more  than  simple  fact  to  express. 

This   process   of  disillusionment  is  one  which  has 
often  repeated  itself  in  one  form  or  other,  in  periods 
when  awaking  reflexion  found  itself  face  to  face  with 
decaying  faith.      In  Greece,  it  took  place  at  the  time 
of    the     Sophists,    and     found    in    them    its    natural     ^^ 
exponents.      In    the    modern   world,   it    began   in    the 
eighteenth  century,  and   it   has   prolonged  itself  into  "^ 
the  present  day.      In  both  cases  it  has  been  acco)n- 
panied  by  an  attempt  to  universalise  the  physical  or 
mechanical   explanation   of  things.     As   Aristophanes 
found  Zeus  dethroned  and  Vortex  reigning  in  his  stead, 
so   now   Positivism   has    preached   that   the   reign   of 
metaphysics   and   theology   has    ended,   and    Professor  "-- 
Huxley  bids  us  look  forward    to  a  time    when  man 
will   be  seen  to  be   only  the  "  cunningest  of  nature's 


POETRY  AND  TRUTH.  209 

clocks."  This  movement,  commonly  called  the  En- 
lightenment or  Aufkldrung,  has  been  met,  both  in 
ancient  Greece  and  in  modern  Europe,  with  a  powerful 
protest  not  only  from  those  who,  like  Aristophanes, 
represent  the  tradition  of  the  beliefs  attacked,  but  also 
by  those  who,  like  Plato,  have  maintained  that  these 
beliefs  represent  in  an  imperfect  form  perennial  truths 
which  can  be  dissociated  from  that  form.  It  is,  there- 
fore, instructive  for  us  to  observe  what  was  Plato's 
attitude  towards  the  enlightenment  of  his  day  :  a  point 
on  which  his  great  work,  the  Bepuhlic,  casts  a  very 
clear  light.  On  the  one  hand,  we  find  Plato  acknow- 
ledging the  necessity  of  the  poetic  or  imaginative 
expression  of  religious  ideas,  the  necessity  of  the 
'  noble  untruth '  of  mythology,  as  a  means  of  culture 

y  in  the  infancy  of  the  individual  and  the  nation. 
He  maintains  that  religious  ideas  can  be  con- 
veyed to  men's  minds,  in  the  earlier  stage  of  their 
development,  only  in  an  objective  and  external  form, 
and  that  poetry  is  necessary  to  elevate  and  idealise 
that  form  and  to  make  it  as  adequate  as  it  is  capable 

^  of  becoming,  to  the  truth  of  which  it  should  be  the 
embodiment.  Men  will  not,  he  thinks,  be  capable  of 
grasping  the  idea  in  itself  if  they  have  not  first  grasped 
/  it  in  a  symbol,  which,  even  as  interpreted  by  feeling, 
may  suggest,  but  cannot  fully  express  it.  On  the  other 
hand,   he    holds   it   to    be   inevitable    that    such    un-  i 

^    spiritual   ways   of  expressing   spiritual    truth    should, 


300  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RELIGION. 

in  the  advance  of  reflexion,  become  a  stumbling-block 
to  those  who  have  received  their  first  teachinof  throuo-h 
them.  j;)oubt  or  unbelief  in  the  facts  or  mythically 
exalted  facts,  to  which  a  divine  meaning  has  been 
attached,  must  inevitably  arise;  and  at  first  it  will 
seem  impossible  to  separate  the  ideas  from  the  vehicle 
through  which  they  were  given.  To  use  Plato's  own 
metaphor,  the  maxims  of  our  supposed  parents  will  lose 
their  authority,  when  it  is  discovered  that  we  have 
been  obeying  them  under  an  illusion,  and  that  we  are 
not  really  their  children.  The  whole  religious  view  of 
life,  with  all  that  is  based  upon  it,  will  seem  to  fee 
discredited,  when  the  outward  form  through  which  it 
came  to  us  can  no  longer  be  taken  to  be  exactly  and 
literally  true.  Plato  recognises  this  danger,  but  has 
no  other  suggestion  to  make  than  that  in  the  Ideal 
State  the  youth  should  be  kept  from  the  study  of 
dialectic — ix.  that  the  reflective,  questioning  activity 
of  the  understanding  should  not  be  awakened  in 
him — till  his  moral  development  has  considerably 
advanced.  Young  men,  prematurely  excited  to  ques- 
tion received  authority,  are  like  "  puppy  dogs  that 
tear  everything  to  pieces."  Hence  the  philosophical 
enlightenment  that  discredits  the  first  forms  under 
which  a  higher  truth  has  been  presented  to  them, 
should  be  postponed,  till,  by  the  moral  discipline  of 
social  life,  they  have  become  able  to  bear  the  shocks 
of  reflexion  without  losing  their  faith.      By  the  time 


POETRY  AND  TRUTH.  301 

that  they  have  received  this  discipline,  they  will, 
Plato  thinks,  be  ready  also  to  appreciate  a  philosophy, 
which  shows  the  imperfection,  and  even,  in  a  sense, 
the  fictitious  character  of  the  vehicle  through  which 
the  divine  idea  is  first  conveyed  to  men,  but  which 
at  the  same  time  proves  that  that  idea  rests  on  a 
rational  basis. 

From  the  point  of  view  we  have  now  reached 
we  can  understand  at  once  the  nature  of  the  difficulty, 
and  the  necessity  of  adopting  something  like  Plato's 
solution  of  it.  The  difficulty  lies  essentially  in  the 
inadequacy  of  the  forms  in  which  the  consciousness  / 
of  God  is  at  first  expressed,  in  so  far  as  these  are  the 
forms  of  the  ordinary,  objective  consciousness  ;  and  the 
solution  must  lie  in  a  recognition  of  the  difference 
between  the  two  forms  of  consciousness,  and  at  the 
same  time  of  the  relation  that  binds  them  to  each 
other.  So  long  as  the  divine,  the  infinite,  the  uni- 
versal, the  spiritual,  is  taken  as  standing  on  the  same 
level  with  the  finite,  the  particular,  the  material ;  so 
long,  in  short,  as  God  is  conceived  as  an  object  which 
occupies  a  definite  and  exclusive  place  among  other 
/  individual  objects  in  the  world  of  sense,  so  long  it  is 
impossible  to  prevent  these  two  forms  of  consciousness 
from  coming  into  collision  with  each  other.  And 
when  they  do  come  into  collision,  it  is  inevitable 
that  in  the  long  run  the  consciousness  of  the  finite 
should    prevail ;    for  it    is,  so    to    speak,  on    its   own 


802  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RELIGION. 

ground,  while  the  religious  consciousness  is  on  the 
ground  of  the  enemy.  What  Aristotle  objected  to  in 
Plato's  ideas,  that  they  were  aiSla  aia-Oijrd,  '  eternal 
things  of  sense ' — at  once  finite  things  and  eternal 
realities — may  with  much  more  ground  be  alleged 
against  a  mode  of  thought  which  intercalates  divine, 
or  spiritual,  existences  in  the  natural  world,  as  if  they 
were  of  the  same  order  with  other  natural  beings. 
Whether  that  intercalation  takes  place  in  the  simple 
Homeric  way  in  which  the  gods  are  brought  into 
the  field  of  battle,  and  sometimes  even  allowed  to 
exchange  blows  with  mortal  combatants,  or  in  the 
more  common  form  of  a  belief  that  the  divine  mani- 
fests itself,  not  in  nature  as  a  whole,  but  rather  in 
occasional  breaches  of  the  order  of  nature,  is  not  of 
much  consequence.  In  both  cases  it  brings  with  it 
the  same  difftculty.  It  treats  the  spiritual  as  a  reality 
of  the  same  order  with  the  natural,  and  thereby 
brings  it  into  collision  with  the  natural.  If  the  divine 
reality  be  identified  with  some  of  the  things  of  sense 
as  against  others,  it  must  be  brought  under  the  criteria 
which  are  applicable  to  things  of  sense.  Yet  these 
criteria  cannot  be  applied  to  it  without  making  it  con- 
tradict its  very  nature  as  divine.  The  physical  form  of 
presentment  will  thus  obscure  and  ultimately  obliterate 
the  spiritual  reality  which  is  confined  to  it ;  and  the 
belief  in  the  divine  as  a  thing  of  sense,  will  turn  into 
a  disbelief  in  evervthing  hut  the  things  of  sense. 


POETRY  AND  TRUTH.  303 

/  The  strength  ^^^ositivism, — using  the  word  in  the 
narrower  sense  in  which  it  implies  the  negation  of 
all  theology  and  metaphysic,  and  of  the  existence 
of  the  objects  to  which  theology  and  metaphysic 
relate,  at  least  as  objects  knowable  by  us, — lies  just 
in  this,  that  it  seeks  to  carry  out  thoroughly  the 
process  of  freeing  the  natural  world  from  spiritual 
interferences.  It  is  called  Auflddrung,  or  Enlighten- 
ment, because  it  is  opposed  to  every  kind  of  belief  in 
the    spiritual   or   divine   which  identifies  it  with  the 

"^  miraculous,  the  arbitrary,  the  lawless,  or  the  unintelli- 
gible ;  because,  so  to  speak,  it  carries  its  candle  into 
every  chamber  of  the  house,  and  insists  on  leaving 
no  dark  corner  unvisited  in  which  ghosts  might  be 
supposed  to  lurk.  As  it  developed,  and  for  the 
first  time  systematically  developed,  a  consciousness 
of  law  and  order  in  the  world — of  the  definite  con- 
nexion of  causes  and  effects  by  which  finite  objects 
are  related  to  each  other — so  it  emancipated  the 
human  mind  from  the  superstitious  tendency  to 
attach  to  these  objects  the  reverence  due  to  the 
infinite.  With  this  clearing  process,  however — this 
war  against  superstition- — there  was  combined  a 
tendency  to  narrow  man's  intellectual  horizon,  to  limit 

"  his  interests  in  a  way  which  is  fatal  to  religion 
and  which  does  not  leave  much  room  for  poetry.  For 
the  Enlightenment  not  only  removed  spiritual  reality 
from  a   sphere   to   wliich   it  did   not   properly   belong, 


1 


304  THE  EVOLUTION  OE  RELIGION. 

or  divested  it  of  a  sensuous  vesture  which  hid  its 
true  nature ;  it  also  led  to  the  denial  that  there  is 
in  human  experience  any  room  for  spiritual  reality 
at  all,  except  as  an  illusion  of  the  infancy  of  the. 
individual  or  the  race. 

To  do  justice  to  this  movement,  however,  we  must 

look  at  it  on  all  sides,  and  consider  more  definitely 

both  its  merits  and  its  defects.      Let  me,  therefore,  in 

the  first  place,  explain  what  exactly  is  the  nature  of  the 

/'  positive  view  of  things  which  the  Enlightenment  brought 

with  it.      Let  me,  in  the  second  place,  show  how  this 

\  positive   view   of   the  objects   of    finite   experience  is 

connected  with  a  negative  view  of  all  that   seems   to 

be    beyond    the    range    of   such    experience.      When 

we   have    clearly   apprehended   these   two    points,  we 

shall  be  in  a  better  position  to  judge  whether  objects 

I'conceived  as  in  space  and  time  are  the  only  objects  of 

'  which  knowledge  is  possible ;   and,  if  not,  what  is  the 

method  by  which  we  can  attain  to  a  knowledge  of  a 

higher  kind. 

What   is   the  positive  or,   as  we   may   call  it,  the 
I  scientific  view  of  nature  ?     It    is   impossible  here  to 

^^"k,  E^^^  '^  complete  account  of  it,  but  for  our  present 
purpose  it  seems  sufficient  to  say,  after  Kant,  that 
it  is  a  view  of  things  which  is  governed  mainly  by  the 
forms  of  time  and  space,  and  by  the  principles  of 
substance,  causality,  and  reciprocity.  It  takes  the 
world   as    a  collection   of  particular   objects  in  space 


\ 


POETRY  AND  TRUTH.  305 

going  through  changes  in  time,  and  it  traces  all  these 
changes  to  the  action  and  reaction  of  these  objects 
according  to  invariable  laws ;  so  that  under  the  same 
conditions  the  same  results  must  invariably  happen. 
This  scientific  conception  of  universal  laws  of  change 
seems  at  first  to  contradict  all  the  usual  assumptions 
of  our  first  sensuous  consciousness ;  for,  as  we  have 
seen,  the  sensuous  consciousness  tends  to  treat  all 
things  and  beings  as  mere  individuals,  and  to  regard 
their  relations  to  each  other  as  accidental  and  arbi- 
trary. Yet,  on  closer  examination,  science  is  found 
to  agree  with  that  consciousness  in  its  most  im- 
portant characteristics,  and  to  differ  from  it,  so  far 
as  it  does  differ,  mainly  by  making  explicit  its 
secret  presuppositions.  In  the  very  earliest  utter- 
ances of  man's  thought  we  find  him  practicall}^ 
using  all  the  principles  by  which  science  is  guided,  or 
at  least  asking  questions  of  nature  which  show 
that  his  mind  is  governed  by  them.  The  difference 
between  this  earliest  consciousness  of  man  and  the 
scientific  consciousness  is  only  that  the  former  does 
not  use  these  ideas  reflectively :  i.e.  it  is  not  aware 
of  the  principles  which  it  presupposes  and  therefore 
it  cannot  apply  these  principles  consistently  and 
accurately.  The  ideas  that  prompt  and  guide  the 
action  of  our  intelligence,  are  not,  in  the  first  in- 
stance, set  before  us  as  rules  ;    and,  so  long  as  this 

is   the    case,  their   application    is    necessarily    uncer- 
VOL.  I.  u 


306  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RELIGION. 

tain  and  arbitrary.  Tn  this  way  we  can  explain 
how  the  questions,  which  the  awaking  intelligence 
is  driven  by  its  own  nature  to  ask,  are  at  first 
answered  in  so  superficial  and  inadequate  a  way ; 
and  how  the  most  eager  curiosity  as  to  the  nature 
and  causes  of  things,  should  yet  be  accompanied  by 
an  all-accepting  credulity  which  is  satisfied  with 
any  idle  fable  that  for  the  moment  stops  the  gap. 
Having  got  the  tortoise  on  which  to  base  the  earth, 
the  savage  never  asks  for  the  elephant  to  support  the 
tortoise.  It  is  only  after  the  principle  of  explana- 
tion has  been  separated  from  the  facts  and  con- 
sidered for  itself,  that  criteria  of  the  validity  of 
such,  explanations  begin  to  be  laid  down.  It  is  only 
then  that  the  mind  ceases  to  be  content  with  the 
first  crude  hypothesis  that  is  presented  to  it ;  and, 
seeing  the  defects  of  that  hypothesis,  begins  to  ask 
how  a  more  adequate  one  can  be  attained. 

Let  me  state  this  thought  again  in  a  slightly 
different  point  of  view.  Judging  by  early  mythology, 
man  would  at  first  seem  to  have  little  or  no 
idea  of  a  reign  of  law  in  the  world,  or  of  any 
necessity  of  connexion  between  its  phenomena.  \ 
Eather,  he  seems  to  regard  all  things  as  isolated 
particulars,  which  might  have  existed  by  themselves, 
and  which  only  at  times  accidentally  and  arbitrarily 
interfere  with  each  other.  The  individuality,  or 
rather     particularity,     of    things     is     to     him     their 


POETRY  A ND  TR U TH.  307 

primary  aspect,  and  their  relativity  is  only  second- 
ary. So  little  notion  has  he  of  a  definite  order 
and  connexion  of  things  that  we  cannot  say  that 
he  believes  in  miraculous  interferences  with  the 
course  of  nature ;  for,   as    yet,   there    is    for    him    no 

^  regular  course  of  nature  from  which  miracles  could 
be  distinguished.  The  world  seems  to  be  a  scene 
given  over  to  the  play  of  chance  and  arbitrary 
will.  Only  gradually  and  by  long  experience  does 
there  arise  a  sense  of  definite  connexion  between 
particular  events  to  modify  that  apparent  contin- 
gency before  which  thought  stands  paralysed. 

But,  while  all  this  is  true,  it  nevertheless  leaves  out 
of  account  one  thing,  namely,  that  the  principle,  which 
leads   to   the   systematic    view    of    the    connexion    of 

'^nature,  is  already  present,  and  that  it  is  its  presence 
that  stimulates  the  mind  to  those  inquiries,  to 
which  the  first  mythological  view  of  the  world  is 
a  kind  of  answer.  For,  confused  and  arbitrary  as 
that  view  seems  to  us  now,  it  is  the  first  effort  of 
the  intelligence  to  bear  up  against  the  multiplicity 
of  impressions  which  are  streaming  in  upon  it  by 
every  sense,  and  to  connect  them  together  in  a 
rational  way.  A  mythology,  however  chaotic  it  may 
be,  is  thus  an  attempt  to  find  the  unity  of  the 
mind  in  the  world ;  the  only  attempt  which  is  pos- 
sible to  the  undeveloped  consciousness  of  those  who 
are  still  intellectually  children.     From  such  a  mytho- 


308  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RELIGION. 

logical  explanation  of  the  world  to  the  scientific 
conception  of  an  order  of  necessity,  binding  all 
things  together,  there  is  a  continuous  advance, 
which  can  only  be  explained  by  saying  that  it  is  due 
to  the  restless  and  persevering  effort  of  thought  \ 
to  find  a  more  and  more  adequate  answer  to  the 
questions,  which  it  is  forced  by  its  own  nature  to  ask. 
Between  the  legend  of  the  South  Sea  Islands  about 
the  liero  who  crept  out  of  a  cave  in  the  earth  and 
employed  his  youthful  energies  in  the  task  of  lift- 
ing up  the  heavens,  which  hitherto  had  lain  flat 
upon  the  earth,  to  their  proper  place,  so  as  to 
make  room  for  mankind  to  move  and  live, — be- 
tween this  legend  and  the  jSTewtonian  theory  of  \ 
gravitation  the  gap  is  wide  enough ;  but  it  is  the 
same  search  for  causes,  that  gave  rise  to  this  myth 
and  to  many  improved  editions  of  it,  and  that  finally 
sets  them  all  aside  to  make  room  for  the  mechanical 
theory  of  the  universe. 

Now  the  process  by  which  the  idea  of  law  or 
necessary  connexion  among  all  the  objects  of  sense 
is  gradually  established,  is  necessarily  also  a  sifting 
process,  by  which  the  religious  elements  are  gradually 
eliminated  from  our  ordinary  consciousness  of  the 
^  ■  finite  world.  The  first  step  in  this  sifting  we  have  \  \ 
^  already  described.     It  is  one  by  which  certain  objects      1 

are  fixed  upon   as  realities   of  a  higher  order,  or  by  '   ' 
which    certain    new    objects    are    constructed    by    the 


^ 


POETRY  AND  TRUTH.  309 

imagination,  and  endowed  with  a  kind  of  ideal  com- 
pleteness and  independence.  These  idealised  objects, 
however,  are  still  regarded  as  parts  of  the  same 
natural  system  to  which  other  objects  belong ;  and 
there  is  as  yet  no  clear  sense  of  the  inconsistency  of 
bringing  the  two  kinds  of  objects,  so  to  speak,  into 
the  same  plane,  or  of  making  them  directly  collide 
with  each  other.  Generally,  there  is  a  tendency  to 
look  for  the  operation  of  the  gods  in  abnormal  pheno- 
mena, in  strange  coincidences  of  events  and  sudden 
overturns  of  fortune,  rather  than  in  the  ordinary 
course  of  nature ;  or  again,  in  great  impulses  or 
inspirations  by  which,  for  good  or  evil,  the  soul  of 
man  is  carried  out  of  itself,  rather  than  in  the  ordinary 
processes  of  mental  life.  But,  in  such  a  stage  of 
culture  as  is  represented  by  Homer,  these  influences 
/  and  interferences  are  scarcely  regarded  as  miraculous. 
They  are  still  reckoned  to  be  a  part  of  the  regular 
order  of  things,  though  a  part  that  attracts  special 
attention,  as  the  revelation  of  a  higher  agency  than 
is  elsewhere  manifested. 

As,  however,  the  consciousness  of  the  order  and 
connexion  of  nature  becomes  more  distinct,  and  the 
idea  of  God  gains  greater  purity  and  elevation,  it 
becomes  more  difficult  to  combine  the  two  into  one,  or 
simply  to  intercalate  the  supernatural  in  the  natural. 
On  the  one  hand,  the  divine,  now  distinctly  con- 
ceived   as    the    infinite    and    the    universal,    separates 


310  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RELIGION. 

itself  more  entirely  from  all  finite  objects ;  and  its 
\  \  direct  interference  thus  comes  to  be  regarded  as  rare 
I  I  and  exceptional.  God  comes  more  and  more  to  be 
thought  of  as  standing  apart  in  his  sacredness, 
exercising  a  superintendence  over  all  things,  but  not 
immediately  interfering  with  special  objects  and  events 
except  when  there  is  a  dignus  vindicc  nodus.  On 
the  other  hand,  the  idea  of  what  Kant  calls  the 
/  /  '  thorough-going  connexion  of  experience  '  becomes 
developed,  so  as  more  and  more  to  exclude  the 
operation  of  chance  or  arbitrary  will.  An  order  of  \ 
necessity  is  distinctly  recognised,  and,  therefore,  any 
intrusion  of  a  divine  or  spiritual  agency  is  now  viewed 
as  definitely  miraculous.  And  from  this  it  is  not  far 
to  the  conviction,  to  which  science  is  continually  add- 
ing new  strength,  that  such  intrusion  is  impossible. 
Thus  the  ranks  of  physical  causation  seem  to  close  up, 
and  to  leave  no  room  for  supernatural  agency.  Every 
fact  comes  to  be  regarded  as  an  essential  element  in  a 
whole,  which  could  not  be  other  than  it  is  without  a 
change  in  its  conditions,  and  in  the  conditions  of  those 
conditions  ad  mjiriitum.  The  hyssop  could  not  grow 
on  the  wall  if  the  whole  world  could  prevent  its 
growing,  and  it  grows  because  the  whole  world  con- 
spires to  make  it  grow  just  there.  Every  change  is 
an  essential  link  in  a  chain,  or  rather  a  mesh  in  a 
network,  which  connects  it  with  all  that  precedes  and 
all  that  coexists  witli  it.      To  those  who  are  filled  with 


POETRY  AND  TRUTH.  811 

this  idea, — the  idea  that  phenouieiia  are  what  they  are, 
and  change  as  they  do  change,  only  because  of  their 
relations  to  other  phenomena,  and  ultimately  to  the 
whole  world  of  experience, — it  becomes  hard  to  give 
credence  to  any  exception,  to  any  break  in  the  unity  of 
nature ;  and  still  harder  even  for  a  moment  to  realise 
the  possibility  of  that  mingling  of  heaven  j.nd  earth 

.  ,  which  was  so  easy  a  thought  to  Homer,  and  which 
seemed  quite  rational  even  to  the  highest  minds  of  the 
Middle  Ages.  In  modern  times,  such  a  '  peace  of 
God,' — such  a  truce  between  the  natural  and  the  super- /  i 
natural  as  allows  them  both  to  occupy  the  same  field 
of  experience  on  almost  the  same  terms, — is  not  capable 
of  being  maintained.  Those  who  believe  that  miracles 
have  happened,  are  at  least  anxious  to  reduce  them  to, 
a  minimum,  and  to  free  their  creed  from  the  burden  of 
all  that  is  not  strictly  necessary  to  it.  On  the  other 
hand,  science  has  become  more  confident  in  its  prin- 
ciples, as  those  principles  have  led  to  greater  triumphs 
in  the  discovery  of  nature's  secrets.  Conscious  that  it 
has  verified  the  necessary  interconnexion  of  pheno- 
mena over  a  very  wide  field,  and  that  it  is  continually 
extending  its  researches  into  new  regions  by  the  aid  of 
the  same  method,  it  is  more  and  more  impatient  of.  all 

/  beliefs  that  still  stand  in  the  way  of  the  acknow- 
ledgment of  the  universality  of  that  method.  Hence 
it  steadily  seeks  to  banish  the  infinite  from  the  sphere 
of    the    finite,    and   even    to    reduce  the    infinite   to    a 


312  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RELIGION. 

nominis  umbra.  Thus  it  was  with  the  Deism  of  last 
century  which,  while  it  interpreted  every  phenomenon 
by  relation  to  another  phenomenon,  and  protested 
against  all  teleological  explanations,  still  left  at  the  ^ 
end  a  Supreme  Being,  of  whom  we  know  nothing  except 
that  He  is.  And  Mr.  Spencer's  unknowable  Absolute, 
of  which  we  have  "  a  consciousness  but  no  knowledge," 
is  only  another  word  for  the  same  idea. 

Now  I  reserve  for  another  lecture  the  task  of 
pointing  out  the  defects  of  this  conception  of  our 
relation  to  the  divine,  and  also  of  showing  how 
these  defects  may  be  corrected.  For  the  present  I 
will  conclude  with  two  reflexions. 

The  first  is,  that  if  the  result  of  our  scientific 
progress  were  to  reduce  the  idea  of  God  to  that  of 
an  unknowable  Etrc  Stipreme,  religion  would  have  \ 
no  special  interest  in  this  spectre  of  its  former 
greatness.  For  all  it  does  is  to  preserve  the  con- 
sciousness that  the  finite  cannot  be  conceived  as 
a  res  com.pleta, — a  whole  bounded  and  terminated  in 
itself.  But  if  all  that  can  really  be  known,  all 
that  can  be  made  into  a  real  interest  of  life,  is 
assigned  to  the  finite,  the  idea  that  there  is  a 
'  beyond '  to  which  we  can  attach  no  definite  pre-  X 
dicate,  can  scarcely  be  considered  of  any  practical 
importance.  The  consciousness  of  such  an  infinite 
would  even  seem  to  be  the  gift  of  an  unfriendly 
destiny ;  for,  so  far  as  we  paid    any   regard  to  it,  it 


POETRY  AND  TRUTH.  313 

would  tend  to  make  us  despise  our  proper  work 
and  all  the  aims  to  which  our  life  is  necessarily 
confined.  It  would  be  like  a  glimpse  of  a  world 
beyond  his  prison  walls  to  a  prisoner  who  could 
never  escape,  and  whose  only  wise  course  would 
y  be  to  shut  his  eyes  to  it  and  make  the  best  of 
his  bondage.  And,  indeed,  if  we  cannot  regard 
ourselves  as  anything  but  '  parts  of  this  partial 
world,'  links  in  an  endless  chain  of  necessity  by 
which  finite  is  bound  to  finite,  it  seems  inexplicable 
that  our  minds  should  ever  be  mocked  by  the  idea 
of  anything  that  is  not  included  in  that  world. 

The  same  condemnation  must  be  applied  to  the 
effort,  encouraged  by  some  writers,  to  get  back  by 
imagination  some  portion  of  that  religious  belief 
which  is  supposed  to  be  for  ever  lost  to  the  reason. 
The  surest  result  of  the  Enlightenment  is  that  the 
imaginative  forms,  in  which  man's  first  religious 
consciousness  embodies  itself,  are  deprived  of  all 
credit,  owing  to  the  impossibility  either  of  taking 
/  them  as  literally  true,  or,  consistently  with  the 
principles  on  which  the  enlightenment  rests,  of  sug- 
gesting any  way  in  which  they  can  be  shown  to 
have  a  true  element  in  them.  Hence  it  is  im- 
possible to  take  seriously  the  advice  of  writers  like 
___Lange,  who  tell  us  still  to  cherish,  for  their  prac- 
i  tical  value,  those  poetic  representations  to  which 
we    can    no    longer    attribute     any    scientific    truth. 


\ 


314  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RELIGION. 

How  can  we  regard  as  jjradically  true  conceptions 
which  are  acknowledged  to  be  theoretically  false  ;  or 
satisfy  our  soul  with  visions  which  we  admit  to  ^ 
be  unreal  ?  If  it  were  once  established  that  all 
that  is  in  any  way  knowable  by  us  is  included, 
in  the  thorough-going  connexion  of  experience,  it 
would  become  idle  to  indulge  in  dreams  of  any- 
thing that  refused  to  take  a  place  in  that  con-., 
nexion.  By  its  very  nature  the  imagination  works 
under  the  sensuous  conditions  of  space  and  time ; 
and,  in  regard  to  all  objects  in  space  and  time, 
the  law  of  nature  and  necessity  is,  ex  hypothesi, 
supposed  to  be  absolute  and  without  exception. 
And  the  untruth  of  representing  objects  as  real, 
which  yet  are  not  subjected  to  this  law,  ceases 
to  be  'noble,'  so  soon  as  it  is  not  regarded  as 
pointing  to  a  deeper  truth.  For  as  poetry  is  not 
ordinary  fact,  so  in  the  impossibility  of  knowing 
anything  but  such  fact,  it  can  be  nothing  else  but 
a  pleasing  fiction,  an  anodyne  by  which  we  may 
console  ourselves  for  a  time,  but  which,  like  other 
anodynes,  will  produce  its  effect  only  by  making  us 
forget  the  reality  of  things.  And  perhaps  a  noble 
mind  will  rather  refuse  such  consolations,  will  refuse 
to  accept  the  myrrh-drugged  wine  of  poetic  fiction, 
merely  as  a  means  to  escape  from  its  misery,  and 
will  prefer  to  endure  its  cross  with  a  clear  conscious- 
ness of  its   pain.      Poetry   had   a  noble   office,   wlien 


POETRY  A ND  TR UTH.  315 

the  ideas  of  an  earlier  time  made  it  interchange- 
able with  prof)hecy,  the  revelation  of  a  truth 
higher  than   truth  of  fact ;  but,  if  these  ideas  should 

V.  utterly  disappear,  if  poetry  could  be  regarded 
merely  as  the  fictitious  product  of  an  imaginative 
faculty,  whose  only  value  was  that  it  supplied  a 
temporary  rest  for  our  sensibility,  and  for  a  time 
ideally  emancipated  us  from  limits  from  which  we 
can  never  really  escape,  it  would  soon  lose  all  its 
power  and  inspiration.     No  great  art  could  ever  live, 

^  if  it  ceased  to  regard  beauty  as  one  with  truth 
,  and  goodness.  No  poet  ever  touched  the  deepest 
springs  of  human  emotion,  who  regarded  himself 
simply   as  the  "idle    singer   of  an   empty  day." 


LECTUEE    TWELFTH. 

THE  LOGICAL  JUSTIFICATION  OF  SUBJECTIVE  EELIGION. 

The  Pcinciple  of  Positivism — That  it  admits  no  Exceptions— That 
its  Defect  is  its  Ahstractness — Complementary  Principle  of  the 
Relativity  of  all  Objects  to  the  Subject — Appeal  from  the  Objec- 
tive to  the  Subjective  Consciousness — The  Argument  from  Desire 
—Kant's  Distinction  betiveen  the  Desi^-es  of  the  Individual  and 
the  Postulates  of  Reason — "  We  Ought,  therefore  we  Can" — 
Kanis  Inference  from  this  that  the  Summum  Bonum  or  Moral 
Ideal  must  be  Realised — That  this  Inference  underlies  all  Sub- 
jective Religion. 

In  the  last  lecture  I  pointed  out  the  nature  of  the 
movement  which  went  formerly  by  the  name  of 
the  Aufkldrung,  or  Enlightenment,  and  which  nowa- 
days is  more  simply  called  Positivism ;  and  I  tried 
to  show  what  is  its  strength  and  its  weakness.  Its 
strength  lies  in  this,  that  it  takes  objects  simply  as 
such,  and  recognises  that,  as  objects  in  one  world,' ^ 
they  are  linked  together  in  necessary  relations.  .  It 
carries  out  unflinchingly  the  idea  of  nature  as  a 
system  of  finite  causes  and  effects,  each  of  which  is 
determined  in  its   place,  its   time,  and   its  character. 


THE  LOGIC  OF  SUBJECTIVE  RELIGION.     317 

by  its  connexion  with  the  rest.  Hence  it  refuses 
to  admit  that  there  can  be  any  hiatus  in  the  series  of 
finite  causation,  or  that  any  element  can  be  inter- 
calated in  it  which  does  not  belong  to  it.  That  any 
object  should  break  away  from  the  general  conditions 
of  objective  experience,  or  should  be  endowed  with  an 
independence  and  completeness  such  as  is  inconsistent 
with  these  conditions,  is  to  it  an  impossibility.  Hence 
the  poetic  idealisation  of  special  objects  which  lets 
them  escape,  so  to  speak,  from  the  ranks  of  merely 
natural  existences,  and  throw  off  the  control  of  neces- 
sity— and,  equally  of  course,  the  poetic  creation  of 
new  objects  which  claim  exemption  from  such  limits  of 
finitude — is  regarded  as  an  entirely  fictitious  process. 
Such  mythical  creations,  whether  they  be  due  to  the 
imagination  of  a  particular  poet,  or  to  the  unconscious 
working  of  the  poetic  instinct  in  a  nation,  are  not 
fact,  and,  therefore,  not  truth  ;  for  Positivism  does  not 
admit  that  there  is  any  truth  but  the  truth  of  fact. 
What  is  not  fact  is  fiction ;  and  as  men  have  now 
learnt  what  are  the  criteria  of  fact,  they  must  reject 
as  fiction  everything  that  will  not  submit  to  these 
criteria,  everything  that  does  not  fit  itself  as  a  finite 
link  into  the  connexion  of  experience.  Every  object 
which  exempts  itself  from  the  limits  of  finitude,  every 
event  that  breaks  the  chain  of  natural  necessity,  is 
i'pso  facto  proved  to  be  an  illusion,  and  belief  in  it 
may  be  at  once  set  aside  as  superstition. 


11 


318  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RELIGION. 

Is  there  any  possibility  of  escaping  this  logic  by 
maintaining  that  the  laws  of  nature  are  subject  to 
exception,  or  that  its  course  is  broken  in  upon  at 
particular  points  by  supernatural  agencies  ?  I  am 
bound  to  say  that  I  do  not  think  so.  I  do  not 
think  that  we  can  admit  in  general  the  mode  of 
thinking  represented  by  the  Enlightenment  of  last 
century,  and  by  the  Positivism  of  the  present  day, 
and  then  say  that,  here  and  there,  whether  in  a  few  or 
in  many  instances,  the  objective  connexion  of  nature 
is  interrupted  by  agencies  that  are  outside  of  the 
system  of  nature.  If  a  miracle  is  a  breach  of  the 
order  of  nature,  it  is  a  fact  that  will  not  submit  to  the 
only  criteria  by  which  such  facts  can  be  determined. 
If,  therefore,  I  venture  to  challenge  the  view  of  things 
to  which  this  mode  of  thought  leads,  it  is  on  other 
grounds  ;  not  on  exceptional  grounds  which  apply  to 
this  fact  and  not  to  that,  to  this  object  and  not  to 
that,  but  on  grounds  which  apply  equally  to  all  facts 
and  all  objects.  I  should  despair  of  finding  evidence  of 
a  principle  which  transcends  the  necessity  of  nature,  if 
that  necessity  were  of  itself  sufficient  to  give  a  com- 
plete account  of  anything.  I  should  not  expect  to 
find  what  is  above  nature  anywhere,  if  there  were 
not  something  above  nature  everywhere.  If  material- 
ism by  the  aid  of  the  atomic  or  any  other  mechanical 
theory  can  furnish  a  complete  rationale  of  the  simplest 
physical  fact,  it  may  still  be  far  away  from  an  explan- 


THE  LOGIC  OF  SUBJECTIVE  RELIGION.     319 

atiou  of  the  universe,  but  it  will  have  got  over  its 
greatest  difficulty.  On  the  other  hand,  it  would  be  a 
fatal  mistake  for  any  spiritual  or  idealistic  philosophy 
— if  by  idealism  we  mean  the  doctrine  that  the  ultimate 
explanation  of  the  world  is  to  be  found  in  a  rational 
principle  kindred  to  the  soul  of  man, — to  admit  that 
the  general  course  of  things  is  to  be  explained  by 
nature  and  necessity,  and  that  the  need  for  a  higher 
explanation  arises  only  when  a  bi-eak  is  made  in  that 
course.  It  would  be  dangerous  for  it  even  to  admit 
that  in  such  breaks  we  have  better  evidence  of  the  exist- 
ence of  a  higher  power  than  is  to  be  found  in  the 
ordinary  course  of  things.  If  God  must  be  conceived 
as  revealing  himself  in  the  whole  world,  one  object 
may  still  be  higher,  may  contain  more  of  Him  than 
another,  but  there  can  be  no  absolute  division  be- 
tween different  objects,  and  no  breach  in  the  con- 
tinuity of  the  process  whereby  He  reveals  himself  in 
them  all. 

If  this  be  true,  then  any  attack  upon  the  principle 
of  Positivism,  which  seeks  only  to  establish  special 
exceptions  to  the  course  of  nature,  must  be  a  failure.  ! 
A  supernaturalism  which  tries  to  survive  alongside  of 
naturalism,  dividing  the  kingdom  with  it,  will  soon 
have  taken  away  from  it  '  even  that  which  it  seemeth 
to  have.'  The  only  hope  of  a  successful  issue  is  to 
carry  the  war  into  the  enemy's  quarters,  and  to 
maintain  what  Carlyle  called  a  Natural  Supernatural-    x 


X 


/ 


820  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RELIGION. 

ism}  i.e.  the  doctrine  not  that  there  are  single  miracles, 
but  that  the  universe  is  viiraculous ;  and  that  in  order 
to  conceive  it  truly,  we  must  think  of  it,  not  as  a 
mechanical  system  occasionally  broken  in  upon  from 
above,  but  as  an  organism  which  implies  a  spiritual 
principle  as  its  beginning  and  as  its  end.  The  idealist 
must  be  prepared  to  show  that  the  mechanical  or 
external  view  of  the  world  to  which  Positivism  tends 
is  an  essentially  imperfect  view,  a  view  which,  no 
doubt,  has  its  uses,  and  represents  certain  aspects  of 
the  truth,  but  which  never  can  be  taken  as  a  final  ac- 
count of  anything,  not  even  of  inorganic  matter.  He 
must,  in  short,  be  prepared  to  show  that  that  view, 
though  based  upon  premises  which  represent  an  im- 
portant aspect  of  reality,  yet  involves  a  forgetfulness 
of  other  and  even  more  important  aspects  of  it ;  and 
that,  therefore,  its  ultimate  consequences,  as  they  are 
derived  from  a  partial  hypothesis,  are  themselves 
hypothetical.  In  other  words,  they  do  not  give  us 
the  whole  truth  in  any  one  instance,  and,  therefore,  can 
still  less  be  taken  as  containing  a  true  view  of  the 
universe  as  a  whole. 

Now  it  is  impossible  here  to  develop  this  thesis  to  its 
ultimate  consequence  ;  but  one  thing  it  is  not  ditficult 

1  Sartor  Resartus,  iii.  8  :  "  Innumerable  are  the  illusions  and 
legerdemain  tricks  of  custom  ;  but  of  all  these  perhajos  the 
cleverest  is  her  knack  of  persuading  us  that  the  miraculous,  by 
simple  repetition,  ceases  to  be  miraculous." 


THE  LOGIC  OF  SUBJKCriVE  RELIGION.     321 

to  show,  viz.  that  Positivism  rests  on  the  ordinaiy 
objective  view  of  things,  in  which  no  account  is. 
taken  of  their  subjective  aspect.  Yet  the  object  is- 
essentialiy  related  to  the  subject,  and  it  is  an  obvious 
fact  that  we  never  have  the  former  without  the  latter. 
It  is  possible  and  natural  that  this  element  of  our 
consciousness  should  at  first  escape  our  attention  ;  for, 
as  we  have  seen,  our  first  consciousness  so  far  loses- 
itself  in  the  object,  that  it  is  forced  to  regard  even  the 
self  within  us  as  a  mere  object ;  and,  as  a  necessary 
y^  consequence,  it  also  reduces  God,  who  is  the  principle^ 
of  unity  in  subject  and  object,  to  the  form  of  an  J 
object.  At  this  late  period  of  human  history,  indeed, 
the  objective  consciousness  does  not  retain  its  original 
directness  and  simplicity.  The  general  current  of 
ordinary  thought  has  been  widened  and  modified  by 
many  streams  of  subjective  reflexion  which  it  has 
received  into  itself  Still  the  one-sided  objective 
attitude  of  mind,  the  attitude  in  which  the  object, 
and  nothing  but  the  object,  is  distinctly  recognised 
or  attended  to,  is  the  common  attitude  of  men.  It 
is  that  attitude  in  which  we  all  receive  the  first  lessons 
of  experience,  and  no  one  escapes  from  living  more 
than  half  his  life  in  it,  however  he  may  realise  its 
inadequacy. 

Nor,  in  this  point  of  view,  does  science  attempt  to 
correct  the  error  or  inadvertence  of  the  ordinary  con- 
sciousness.     In  fact,  it  rather  tends  to  increase  that 

VOL.    I,  X 


V 


322  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RELIGION. 

error  by  the  self-imposed  limitations  under  which  it 
pursues   its   task.      The   usual   method   of  science   in 
dealing  with  any  complex  problem  is  to  break  it  up 
into  as  many  simpler  problems  as  possible,  in  order 
that  it  may  lessen  the  difficulties  to  be  encountered, 
and  win    the   battle   of  knowledge   in   detail.     As    I 
showed  in  the  first  of  these  lectures,  science  seeks  to 
isolate  the  element  or  aspect  of  reality  which  it  would 
investigate,  from  all  the  other  elements  or  aspects  of 
it.      It  thus  for   a  time   deliberately  accepts  what  it 
knows  to  be  an  untrue  hypothesis,  in  order  that  itX 
may  avoid  the  impossible  task  of  answering  all  ques- 
tions  at   once.       It   deals    with   pure   numbers,   with 
simple  geometrical  figures,  with  absolutely  rigid  bars 
and   perfect   fluids,  though  it   is  well  aware  that  all 
these  are  fictions  of  abstraction.      In  all  this  it  pur- 
sues a  legitimate  end  by  perfectly  legitimate  means. 
But  there  is  one  thing  which  it  is  necessary  for  the 
scientific  man  always  to  remember,  if  he  would  not 
become  the  victim  of   his  own  method,  and  that  is, 
that  he  -is  abstracting.      For  it  is  obvious  that  there 
are    no    things    which    are    purely    mathematical,    or 
mechanical,  or  chemical  in  all  their  relations.     There 
is  no  aspect  or  element  of  the  real  world  which  exists 
alone.      Of  none  of  them  can  we  say  what  it  would 
be,  or  whether  it  could   le  at  all,  if  the  others  were 
removed.       Science    is,    therefore,    strictly     speaking, 
hypothetical,  i.e.  it  gives  an  account  of  certain  elements, 


THE  LOGIC  OF  SUBJIiCTIVE  RELIGION.     323 

a&  if  they  could  be  absolutely  isolated  ;  while  yet  we 
know  that  they  never  are  isolated,  nor,  so  far  as  we 
know,  can  be  isolated  from  the  rest.  And  from  this 
follows  an  obvious  consequence,  viz.  that  we  cannot 
either  apply  our  science,  or  know  what  its  results  i, 
really  mean,  unless  we  invert  our  abdracting  2)roa''^s,  and|j 
recall  the  elements  we  have  left  out  of  account.  We 
cannot  apply  the  simplest  mechanical  rules  without 
making  allowance  for  the  varied  nature  of  our 
materials,  and  the  varied  conditions  under  which  they 
are  to  be  used.  We  cannot  apply  our  abstract 
economical  reasonings  without  considering  that  men 
are  not  creatures  moved  by  the  simple  motive  of  a 
/  thirst  for  gain,  but  human  beings  living  in  families 
and  states,  and  affected  by  each  other  in  a  thousand 
ways  of  which  economic  science  takes  no  account.^ 
We  caitnot  apply  our  anatomical  knowledge  to  the 
explanation  of  the  phenomena  of  life,  if  we  do  not 
remember  that  the  body  was  dead  when  we  dissected  it ; 
otherwise  we  are  likely  to  find  that  the  very  process 
whereby  we  seek  the  truth  has  removed  from  our 
view  the  most  important  fact  to  be  considered. 
"  Wer  will  was  Lebendigs  erkennen  imd  beschreibeii, 

Sucht  erst  den  Geist  lieraus  zu  treiben  ; 

Dann  hat  er  die  Theile  in  seiner  Hand, 

Felilt,  leider  !   nur  das  geistige  Band."  ^ 
^  He  who  wishes  to  know  and  to  describe  a  living   thing, 
endeavours  first  to  drive  the  soul  out  of  it ;    then  he  has  in 
his  hands    the   separate   parts ;    only  the    spiritual   bond,  un- 
fortunately, is  gone. 


324  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RELIGION. 

Nothing  exists  alone,  and  when  we  take  it  alone,  we 
may  he  leaving  out  just  what  is  essential  to  a  true 
view  of  it.  Hence  the  thought  that  divides  is  apt  to 
lead  to  dangerous  illusions,  idols  of  the  cave,  if  it  be 
not  corrected  by  the  thought  that  reunites.  Synthesis 
must  complete  the  work  of  analysis,  and  give  us  back 
the  whole  which  we  have  'murdered  in  order  to  dis- 
sect.' We  must  restore  the  parts,  which  by  the  in-  \ 
evitable  abstraction  of  science  we  have  displaced  and 
distorted,  to  their  proper  position  and  relations.  And 
on  the  success  of  this  process  of  restoration  must  it 
depend  whether  we  get  from  science  a  true  view  of 
the  world  as  a  whole, — a  view  which  is  better  than  the 
confused  unity  of  sense,  because  it  distinguishes,  and  . 
better  than  the  onesidedness  of  the  special  sciences, 
because  it  reunites. 

Now,  among  the  elements  of  reality  which  are  put  , 
aside  or  neglected  by  science,  and  which  it  is 
necessary  to  restore  if  we  would  have  the  truth  of 
knowledge,  is  that  of  which  we  have  been  speaking, 
viz.  the  relation  of  all  objects  to  a  subject.  Like  the 
ordinary  consciousness,  and  even  more  than  the 
ordinary  consciousness,  science  insists  on  a  purely ' ) 
objective  view  of  things.  And  here,  too,  the  abstrac- 
tion is  useful  and  even  necessary,  so  long  as  it  is 
not  forgotten  that  it  is  an  abstraction.  But  this  is 
just  what  Positivism  forgets,  when  it  attempts  to 
universalise  the  mechanical  view  of  nature  and  human 


THE  LOGIC  OF  SUBJECTIVE  RELIGION.     325 

nature.  It  treats  the  world  as  if  it  were  complete 
in  itself  without  any  knowing  subject ;  whereas  it  is 
almost  an  Irish  bull  to  say  that,  if  there  be  such  a 
world,  we  do  not  and  cannot  know  anything  about  it. 
The  conscious  self  may  be  an  important  or  an  un- 
important element  of  experience,  of  that  we  are  not 
in  the  first  instance  called  upon  to  decide;  at  any 
rate,  it  is  an  essential  element.  In  the  drama  of  our' 
experience,  the  Ego  may  be  the  Hamlet,  or  it  may  be . 
only  a  walking  gentleman :  one  thing  is  certain,  it  is 
always  on  the  stage ;  and,  if  it  were  not,  the  play ', 
could  not  go  on.  And  if  we  wish  to  complete  our 
view  of  the  facts,  we  must  restore  to  its  place  the  part 
we  have  omitted,  and  consider  what  difference  its 
restoration  makes.  We  must  recognise  that  the  whole 
truth  of  our  experience  is  not  summed  up  in  what  we 
call  the  facts  of  the  objective  world,  even  if  we  add  all 
the  laws  of  their  connexion  which  science  has  dis- 
covered or  ever  can  discover ;  but  that,  besides, 
we  must  take  account  of  the  no  less  certain  fact  of  the 
subjective  unity  of  the  intelligence  for  which  these 
facts  exist.  Any  merely  objective  explanation  of  the 
world,  however  complete  it  may  be,  leaves  out  an 
essential  element  in  it,  and  is  therefore  abstract  and 
hypothetical.  For  we  cannot  know  a  'priori  that  the 
reintroduction  of  .the  element  left  out  will  not  chano-e 
our  whole  view  of  the  other  elements.  Even  if 
science  were  able  to  give  a  complete  account  of  the 


326  THE  EVOLUTION  OE  RELIGION. 

world,  and  to  explain  all  the  relations  of  its  parts  on 
principles  of  mechanical  necessity,  it  would  not  have 
secured  the  triumph  of  materialism.  For  it  might 
well  be  that  a  careful  consideration  of  the  relation 
of  this  mechanically  explained  world  to  the  mind  that 
knows  it,  would  invalidate  or  even  invert  all  the 
results  thus  attained.  A  French  writer  has  said  that 
"  if  there  were  nothing  but  matter,  there  would  be  no 
Materialism."  The  very  presence  of  the  consciousness  ^ 
which  is  implied  in  such  a  theory,  is  a  demonstration 
that  the  theory  is  incomplete  ;  and  therefore  that,  if  it 
be  put  forward  as  a  philosophical  dogma  as  to  the 
nature  of  things,  and  not  merely  as  an  hypothesis 
which  it  is  useful  for  certain  scientific  purposes  to 
assume,  it  is  untrue. 

There  are  two  ways  in  which  this  result  may 
be  taken,  and  therefore  two  ways  in  which  we  \ 
may  seek  to  advance  beyond  it.  We  may  take 
^it  in  a  purely  nc/jative  way,  as  a  condemnation  of 
^all  our  knowledge  in  so  far  as  it  is  based  on  an 
objective  view  of  things  ;  or,  in  other  words,  as  a 
proof  that  the  objective  view  of  things  can  only  \ 
at  best  give  us  a  systematic  account  of  phenomena 
or  appearances,  and  not  any  knowledge  of  things  as 
they  really  are.  And  from  this  we  may  draw  the 
inference  that,  in  order  to  reach  the  reality  that  is 
hid  beneath  these  appearances,  we  must  look  inwards 
and   not   outwards,   we   must  cease  to   study   the  out- 


THE  LOGIC  OF  SUBJECTIVE  RELIGION.     327 

ward    world    and    begin    to    study    our    own    souls. 
Or,   on  the  other  hand,   we  may  take  it  in  a  2>ositivc 
way,  as  a  proof  that    the    objective    view   of  things, 
even    when    corrected    and    systeniatised   by   science, 
gives    us    an    abstract    and     therefore    an    imperfect' 
knowledge    of    them,  because    it   leaves   out    one  and 
that  the  most  important  of  their  aspects.     We  may 
argue,   therefore,    that    the    intelligible    world    cannot 
be  understood,  unless    we    take    into    account  its  re- 
lation to  the   intelligence ;    and   we  may  attempt   to 
reach  the  truth  by  bringing   back    the  element  thus 
omitted.     We     may     thus     seek     to    reinterpret    the 
results  of  our   objective   knowledge   of  the    world    in 
the  light  of  a  fact  which  science  neglects  and  which 
Positivism   would    exclude.      If  we  adopt  the   former 
alternative,  we  shall  be  led  to  oppose  the  subjective 
to   the   objective    view   of  things,   and   to    assert   the 
inner    at    the   expense    of    the    outer   life.     In  other 
words,  our  weapon    against    materialism    will    lie    in 
showing    that    the    world    of   matter    is    a    world    of 
appearance,    and    that    it    is    only    as    we    withdraw 
upon   the  inner   world  of  thought   that   we   can  ap- 
prehend   the    reality    of    things.      If    we    adopt    the 
latter    alternative,    we    shall    be    led    to    regard    the 
inner   and   the   outer,   the  subjective  and    the    objec- 
tive, as  abstract  elements  of  reality,  which  can  only 
be   understood   when   seen   in   their  unity  with    each 
other.      And    our    weapon    against    materialism    will 


328  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RELIGION. 

be  the  proof  that  matter  itself  is  relative  to  spirit, 
and  that,  therefore,  neither  can  be  understood  as 
what  it  really  is,  till  it  is  seen  as  a  factor  in  the 
development  of  spiritual  life. 

Now,  after  what  has  been  said  in  a  former  lec- 
ture, I  need  scarcely  repeat  that  these  two  ways  of 
thinking  are  not,  strictly  speaking,  alternatives,  but 
rather,  successive  stages  through  which  the  mind 
passes  in  the  course  of  its  development.  The  one- 
sided objective  view  of  things  develops  till  its  im- 
perfection becomes  manifest,  and  then  it  finds  its 
natural  corrective  in  a  view  which  separates  the 
subject  from,  and  raises  it  above  the  object.  And 
it  is  only  when  this  view  also  has  been  thoroughly 
worked  out,  and  has  shown  all  its  characteristic 
excellences  and  defects,  that  it  becomes  possible  to 
reach  a  view  which  does  justice  to  object  and  sub- 
ject alike.  Even  religion,  though  it  is  essentially 
the  consciousness  of  a  unity  which  is  beyond  the 
difference  of  subject  and  object,  and  therefore  always 
contains  in  itself  a  kind  of  anticipation  of  this 
last  and  highest  view  of  things,  has  itself  to  pass 
through  a  predominantly  subjective  as  well  as  a 
predominantly  objective  phase,  ere  it  can  reach  an 
explicit  apprehension  of  that  unity,  or,  as  I  have 
previously  expressed  it,  ere  it  can  know  God  in  the 
form  of  God. 

It     is     the     second    of    these    phases    of    religion 


\ 


THE  LOGIC  OF  SUBJECTIVE  RELIGION.     329 

which  we  have  now  to  examine.  But  before  deal- 
ing with  it  in  the  concrete  form  in  which  it  pre- 
sents itself  in  religious  history,  it  may  be  useful  to 
consider  a  little  more  closely  the  inner  logic  of 
/it,  the  secret  movement  of  thought  which  it  in- 
volves. Subjective  religion  is,  in  the  fiv&t  place, 
the  surrender  of  the  outward  world,  and  of  the 
external  course  of  things  to  fate,  to  the  law  of 
nature  and  necessity,  or,  at  least,  to  some  power 
or  principle  which  is  not  regarded  as  divine,  and 
may  even  be  regarded  as  essentially  opposed  to  the 
divine.  And  it  is,  in  the  second  place,  the  appeal 
to  something  within  us,  something  that  is  bound 
up  with  the  inner  consciousness  of  self,  as  the  re- 
velation of  the  highest,  the  authentic  voice  of  God. 
-^  It  is  the  religion  of  subjectivity,  of  moral  aspir-  , 
ation,  of  prophecy;  the  religion  for  which  the  ideal /I 
is  opposed  to  the  real,  yet  in  a  sense  conceived  to 
have  a  higher  reality.  It  is  a  religion  which  sets 
the  demands  of  the  heart,  the  conscience,  or  the 
reason,  above  all  the  facts  of  outward  experience. 
Thus  when  Tennyson,  disgusted  with  the  conclusions 
to  which  materialistic  science  seems  to  be  driving 
him,   cuts  the  knot  by  declaring  that — 

"  Then,  like  a  man  in  wvath,  the  heart 
Stood  up  and  answered, '  I  have  felt,'" 

he    is    speaking   the   language   of  subjective   religion, 
and  claiming  that  an  inward  conviction  should  out- 


330  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RELIGION. 

vote  all  outward  experience.      Again,  when  Ipliigenia, 
in   Goethe's  tragedy,  meets   the   objection — 

"  It  is  no  God  that  speaks,  'tis  only  thine  own  heai't," 

with  the  instant  answer — 

"  'Tis  only  throiif^h  our  hearts  the  gods  speak  to  us," 

she  is  setting  her  own  inward  ideal  against  the 
apparent  reality,  and  claiming  that  the  former  should 
be  trusted  against  all  evidence  derived  from  the  latter. 
And  Kant  is  only  translating  the  poetry  of  such  pas- 
sages into  prose  when  he  asserts  that  the  conviction  that 
we  oxKjM  to  do  any  act,  is  a  sufficient  evidence  that  we  \ 
can  do  it;  and  even  calls  upon  us  to  believe  in  God 
and  immortality,  because  a  God  must  exist  to  realise 
the  moral  ideal,  and  because  there  is  no  room  fully  to 
realise  it  within  the  bounds  of  mortal  life.  He  is,  in 
fact,  asserting  that  the  Good  is  the  True,  that  the  V 
highest  moral  ideal  is  at  the  same  time  the  ultimate 
reality  of  things,  and  that,  in  short,  our  subjective 
consciousness  of  that  which  '  ought  to  be,'  is  at  the  \ 
same  time  our  best  definition  of  that  which  '  %&!  On 
this  view  our  inner  recoil  against  immediate  reality  is 
believed  to  carry  us  beyond  it  to  a  deeper  reality ;  the 
demand  which  our  spirits  make,  that  the  facts  should 
yield  to  our  ideal,  is  taken  as  itself  a  proof  that  they 
are  illusive,  phenomenal,  or  transitory  ;  and  that,  there- 
fore, in  one  way  or  another,  they  are  to  be  put  out  of 


THE  LOGIC  OF  SUBJECTIVE  RELIGION.     831 

court  in  our  ultimate  judgments  as  to  the  real  nature 
of  tilings  and  of  the  Divine  Being  on  whom  they 
depend. 

Now,  how  can  such  a  way  of  thinking  be  justified  ? 
It  is  easy  to  see  that  it  may  be  morally  profitable  ; 
for  a  belief  in  the  existence  of  goodness  often  does 
good  to  him  who  entertains  it,  even  when  the  indi- 
vidual believed  to  be  good  has  none  of  the  virtues 
attributed  to  him.  Love  may  be  directed  to  an 
unworthy  or  commonplace  object,  but  none  the  less 
does  its  idealising  power  elevate  the  character  of  the 
lover.  And  sometimes  we  may  say  without  any 
cynicism  that  the  dream  is  so  much  beyond  the 
reality,  that  it  is  no  ill  fortune  for  the  dreamer  if  it 
remain  unrealised.  Is  it  not  the  fruits  that  are 
never  enjoyed,  or  that  are  prematurely  snatched  from 
our  lips,  which  retain  immortal  sweetness  ?  Desire  is 
always  prophesying  its  own  complete  satisfaction ;  and 
it  requires  only  a  slight  suggestion  from  without  to  con- 
nect the  idea  of  such  satisfaction  with  an  object  which, 
if  real  at  all,  has  no  reality  corresponding  to  the  hopes 
that  are  attached  to  it  so  long  as  it  is  unattained. 
And,  if  it  is  never  attained,  its  finitude  may  never  be 
discovered.  But  in  such  cases  the  beauty  lies,  if 
anywhere,  in  the  eye  that  sees  it.  The  good  sought 
is  nowhere,  if  not  in  the  soul  that  seeks  it.  Might 
we  not  even  quote  the  words  of  Scripture  in  a 
changed  sense,  and  say  that  "  faith  is  the  substance  of 


332  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RELIGION. 

things  hoped  for,"  their  only  substance  ?  Is  it  not 
the  commonplace  of  moralists  that  life  is  a  hunt  after 
illusions,  which  are  found  out  whenever  they  are 
caught, — an  experience  which  would  soon  produce 
despair,  were  it  not  for  what  Goethe  calls  the  '  uncon- 
querable levity '  of  man,  with  which  he  substitutes 
a  new  illusion  for  the  one  that  has  been  found  out, 
and  were  it  not  that  there  are  some  shadows  that  are 
never  caught  ? 

Now,  what  reason  is  there  for  attaching  higher 
credit  to  such  subjective  evidence  in  religion  ?  If  we 
find  men  worshipping  what  they  admire,  and  bestow- 
ing the  throne  of  the  universe  upon  a  being  who 
realises  what  they  wish  for — or  at  least,  what  they 
wish  for  in  their  best  moments,  and  think  they 
ought  always  to  wish  for — does  this  show  anything 
except  that,  as  Feuerbach  says,  the  gods  are  '  the 
wishes  of  men  thought  of  as  already  realised.'  Why 
in  the  case  of  religion  should  we  regard  such  a 
conversion  of  the  subjective  into  the  objective  with 
a  respect  which  we  do  not  pay  to  it  in  any  other 
sphere  ?  Our  desires  and  longings,  at  least  when 
they  reach  a  certain  degree  of  intensity,  recalcitrate 
against  the  idea  of  their  own  subjectivity.  They 
are  incredulous  of  the  unreality  of  their  objects,  and 
hold  out  against  the  strongest  evidence  of  such  un- 
reality, almost  with  the  same  instinctive  revolt  with 
which    we    listen    to    a    story   that    reflects    discredit 


THE  LOGIC  OF  SUBJECTIVE  RELIGION.    333 

upon  the  character  of  a  trusted  friend.  In  such  a 
case  men  have  often  felt  that  they  could  outvote  the 
v^orld  in  the  strength  of  their  solitary  conviction. 
"My  life  upon  his  faith!"  But  what  right  have  we  to 
treat  the  great  Power  of  the  universe,  as  if  it  were  a 
friend  whose  character  is  so  intimately  known  to  us 
that  we  feel  certain  he  cannot  deceive  ?  Is  not  such 
a  belief  an  extension  of  our  first  natural  mistake  of 
thinking  all  things  centred  in  ourselves,  a  mistake 
which  is  seen  in  an  exaggerated  form  in  childhood 
with  its  unreasonable  demands,  that  would  grasp  at 
the  sun  and  moon  and  expect  them  to  become  its 
playthings  ?  Is  it  not  the  lesson  of  experience  that 
the  world  goes  its  own  way,  and  that  we  cannot  make 
it  accommodate  itself  to  us,  but  that  we  must  accom- 
modate ourselves  to  it  ? 

The  argument  from  desire  is,  undoubtedly,  one  to 
which  recourse  is  often  had  by  writers  who  are  trying 
to  find  some  philosophical  justification  for  the  relig- 
ious sentiment,  and  especially  for  the  demand  of  our 
spiritual  nature  for  something  more  than  any  finite 
satisfaction.  Thus  Dante,  in  a  remarkable  passage, 
pictures  man's  insatiable  thirst  for  knowledge,  which 
cannot  be  satisfied  by  anything  less  than  the  attain- 
ment of  absolute  truth.  At  the  foot  of  every 
certainty,  he  declares,  a  new  doubt  springs  up,  and  so 
drives  us  to  seek  beyond  every  truth  for  a  still  deeper 
truth ;  and   then  he  adds  that  the  possibility  of  our 


334  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RELIGION. 

finally  reaching  absolute  truth  is  not  to  be  questioned  ; 
for,  if  it  were  not  possible,  then  "  all  desire  would  be 
vain  and  meaningless."  In  this,  as  is  often  the  case 
with  Dante,  he  is  just  repeating  the  words  of  the 
great  Angelic  Doctor,  Thomas  Aquinas,  who  declares 
that  "  if  the  rational  intelligence  of  the  creature 
could  not  attain  to  the  first  cause  of  things,  natural 
desire  would  remain  empty  and  ineffectual."  In  the 
same  spirit  I^scal  speaks  of  man,  as  a  being  '  cribbed, 
cabined,  and  confined '  by  the  conditions  of  his  earthly 
existence — a  being  whose  destiny  in  this  world  brings 
with  it  no  good  which  is  adequate  to  his  deepest 
wants ;  whose  nature,  therefore,  must  be  taken  as 
prophetic  of  another  sphere  for  which  it  is  preparing, 
and  in  which  alone  it  will  have  full  scope.  And 
Goethe's  great  dramatic  poem,  Faust,  has  a  similar 
theme.  The  devil  deceives  himself  when  he  under- 
takes to  satisfy  man  with  earthly  food,  and  Faust  is 
saved  because  he  cannot  thus  be  satisfied.  "  The 
man  who  is  ever  striving,  ever  endeavouring  after 
some  higher  good,  him,"  says  the  song  of  the  angels, 
"  we  can  redeem  or  deliver  from  the  powers  of 
evil." '  Whom  neither  the  devil  nor  the  world  can 
satiate,  God  must  satisfy. 

Now,  whatever  the  value  of  this  argument,  we  can- 
not accept  it  simply  as  it  is  stated.      Before  we  can 

^  Wer  immer  strebend  sioli  benuiht, 
Den  konnen  wir  erloseii. 


N 


THE  LOGIC  OF  SUBJECTIVE  RELIGION.     335 

even  admit  that  it  has  any  validity  at  all,  we  must 
tind  some  way  of  distinguishing  between  the  chance 
desires,  which  are  continually  arising  within  us  to  meet 
or  to  miss  a  chance  satisfaction,  and  those  higher 
longings  which,  as  it  is  maintained,  carry  with  them 
the  assurance  of  the  reality,  and  the  attainableness  of 
their  objects.  We  nmst  be  able  to  show  why  we  do 
not  put  man's  aspiration  to  the  infinite  in  the  same 
class  with  those  random  wishes  for  the  impossible, 
which  every  day  we  set  aside,  in  obedience  to  the 
common  sense  that  makes  us  recognise  their  incon- 
sistency with  the  conditions  and  limits  of  our  earthly 
existence.  There  is,  indeed,  an  obvious  diff'erence ' 
between  the  desire  for  the  knowledge  of  God  or  for 
the  realisation  of  the  kingdom  of  heaven — for  the 
attainment,  whether  in  this  world  or  another,  of  a 
perfect  state,  in  which  sin  and  misery  shall  be  done 
away,  and  the  last  enemy  death  shall  be  destroyed — 
between  desires  like  these,  and  the  desire  for  any 
finite  good  ;  say,  for  the  attainment  of  immense  riches 
or  power.  But,  at  first,  the  difference  seems  to  be  in 
favour  of  the  practical  possibility  of  realising  the 
latter,  rather  than  the  former.  For  desires  for  a  finite 
good,  however  great,  do  not  carry  us  beyond  the  limits 
of  experience.  The  wish  to  be  a  king  or  even  a 
millionaire  is  dependent  for  its  realisation  on  a 
thousand  contingencies ;  but  there  is  a  calculable, 
though,   it   may  be,   an    almost   infinitesimal    chance. 


336  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RELIGION. 

that  these  contingencies  may  meet  together  in  my 
individual  case.  "  Being  a  man,"  says  Sancho  Panza, 
"  I  may  come  to  be  Pope,  and  much  more  easily 
governor  of  an  island."  ^  On  the  other  hand,  it  might 
seem  that  the  distinguishing  characteristic  of  those 
higher  desires  of  which  we  have  been  speaking,  is 
just  that,  on  empirical  grounds,  there  is  not  "even  a 
chance,  or,  at  least,  the  means  of  calculating  a  chance 
of  their  fulfilment ;  seeing  that  to  think  of  them  as 
fulfilled,  is  to  go  beyond  all  the  conditions  of 
experience,  on  the  basis  of  which  alone  we  can 
calculate  anything.  Why  should  our  faith  in  the 
prophetic  power  of  our  desires,  turn  into  a  con- 
fident expectation,  just  when  they  become  transcend- 
ent, and  carry  us  altogether  beyond  the  region  of 
the  calculable  ?  Why  should  we  reject  as  unreason- 
able all  wishes  which  somewhat  strain  the  limits  of 
finite  possibility,  and  count  supremely  reasonable 
those  which,  as  it  were,  break  the  mould  of  experi- 
ence in  which  all  our  ordinary  hopes  and  fears  are 
cast,  and  refuse  to  express  themselves  except  '  under 
the  form  of  eternity '  ?  Is  not  this  another  example 
of  the  credo  quia  ■im2:)ossibile,  which  we  can  explain 
only  on  Kant's  principle  that  what  is  altogether 
beyond  experience,  is  for  that  very  reason  safe  from 
being  refuted  by  experience  ? 

Now  I  have  already  indicated  how  these  difficulties 
^  Do7i  Quixote,  First  Part,  iv.  47. 


THE  LOGIC  OF  SUBJECTIVE  RELIGION.     337 

would  be  met  by  one  who,  like  Kant,  takes  his  stand 
at  the  point  of  view  of  subjective  religion.  In  the 
first  place,  he  would  set  aside  the  argument  from  out- 
ward experience  as  irrelevant.  The  world  of  experi- 
ence,, he  would  argue,  is  merely  a  world  of  appear- 
ances, which  have  no  reality  except  for  the  self  to 
whom  they  appear:  it  is  a  system  of  objects,  which 
are  themselves  essentially  related  to  the  subject  that 
knows  them.  But  this  subject  cannot,  without 
reasoning  in  a  circle,  be  included  in  the  system  J 
which  presupposes  him.  The  self  to  which  all 
appears  cannot  be  one  of  the  appearances  of  its 
own  subjectivity  :  the  subject,  as  Kant  agrees, 
cannot  be  brought  under  the  laws  by  which  it 
determines  and  connects  the  objects  of  its  know- 
ledge. Although,  therefore,  outward  experience  does 
not  afford  any  evidence  for  those  beliefs  and  hopes 
which  are  connected  with  our  moral  consciousness, 
no  shadow  of  doubt  is  thereby  cast  upon  those 
beliefs  and  hopes  themselves.  We  could  not  expect 
that  our  objective  consciousness,  which  has  to  do 
only  with  the  relative  and  phenomenal,  should 
supply  any  evidence  for  ideas  that  reach  beyond 
the  sphere  of  the  relative  and  phenomenal.  But 
neither  can  it  give  us  any  reason  to  reject  such 
ideas,  if  evidence  for  them  should  be  found  else- 
where in  our  inward  consciousness  of  ourselves. 
The    astronomer    who    swept    the    heavens    with    his 

VOL.  I.  Y 


338  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RELIGION. 

telescope  and  found  no  God,  had  proved  nothing 
except  that  God  is  not  an  object  of  outward  ex-N^ 
perience.  Setting  aside,  therefore,  all  objections 
derived  from  such  experience,  we  can  listen  un- 
disturbed to  the  voice  of  reason  within  us ;  for  it 
is  only  in  the  inward  forum  of  self-consciousness 
that  we  cease  to  deal  with  the  appearances  of 
sense,  and  are  brought  into  contact  with  the  essen- 
tial reality  of  things. 

But,    in    the    second    place,  the  defender    of    sub-  i  / 
jective   religion   has   to   meet   the   objection   that   the 
inner    oracle    to   which   he   appeals    is   at    least  am- 
biguous.     For,  when  we  turn  our  eye  upon  ourselves, 
we   find  within  us   many   impulses   which   obviously 
have    no    objective     reality    corresponding    to    them,    -s,^ 
Kant,    therefore,    tries     to    show     that    there    is    an 
essential   distinction   between   our   ordinary   wishes —  1 
the  wishes  which  spring  out  of  our  natural  individual- 
ity and  out  of  the   particular    circumstances    of  our 
environment — and   those   desires  which    arise   directly  j  I 
out   of   our   rational    and    moral    nature,    our   nature  \ 
as  self-conscious  beings.      The  former  class  of  desires 
is     bound    up     with    our     individual     existence     as 
sensitive    beings    in    a    world    of   sense,   beings    who 
are,    therefore,    acted    upon    by    other    objects,    and 
stimulated     to    react    upon    them    by    the    pleasures 
and  pains  which  they  occasion.      The  latter  class  of 
desires    arises    out    of    the     pure     consciousness     of 


THE  LOGIC  OF  SUBJECTIVE  RELIGION.     339 

ourselves  as  subjects,  and  is,  therefore,  inde- 
pendent of  all  the  conditions  of  our  individual 
existence.  For  when  we  abstract  from  all  such 
empirical  relations  of  our  being,  we  yet  do  not  find 
our  inner  life  a  blank.  Indeed,  it  is  just  then,  as 
Kant  maintains,  that  we  become  most  clearly  con- 
scious of  certain  desires  or  tendencies,  certain 
demands  of  our  rational  nature,  which  we  cannot 
suppose  to  be  aimless  without  distrusting  that 
rational  principle  which  is  the  basis  of  all  our 
certitude.  In  the  language  of  Kant,  they  take  the 
form  of  Postulates  of  Reason,  postulates  which  reason 

'''^  entitles  us  to  make,  in  the  absence  of  any  other 
evidence.  Thus  we  postulate  God,  freedom,  and 
immortality,  not  because  we  can  prove  them  to  be// 
real,  but  because,  as^  iiioral  beings,  we  cannot  do 
witliout  them :  because  the  attitude  towards  the 
/  world  which  we  necessarily  take  up,  when  we 
regard  ourselves  as  moral  subjects,  involves  their 
objective  reality.  Kant  does  not  shun  expressing 
this  belief  in  what  seems  its  most  paradoxical  form. 
"  The  righteous  man,"  he  declares,  "  may  say :  I  will 
that  there  should  be  a  God:  I  ivill  that,  though  in 
this  world  of  natural  necessity,  I  should  not  be  of 
it,  but  should  also  belong  to  a  purely  intelligible 
world  of    freedom:    finally,  I  will  that    my  duration 

/    should  be  endless.      On  this  faith   I   insist   and  will 
not  let  it  be  taken  from  me." 


340  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RELIGION. 

These  statements  were  criticised  by  a  certain 
Professor  Wizenmann,  who  brought  against  them  the 
same  objection  which  has  been  stated  above.  In 
other  words,  Wizenmann  pointed  out  that  the 
feeling  of  want  is  the  source  of  endless  illusions, 
leading  men  to  suppose  that  a  satisfaction  is 
provided  for  it  in  cases  in  which  no  such  pro- 
vision is  made ;  and,  still  more  frequently,  making 
them  attribute  to  some  object  a  perfect  adapta- 
tion to  our  wants,  which  it  does  not  possess, 
which,  perhaps,  no  object  whatever  possesses.  And 
he  went  on  to  compare  Kant's  assertion — that  we 
have  a  right  to  assume  the  possibility  of  the  realisa- 
tion of  the  moral  ideal,  or  the  existence  of  all 
the  conditions  which  are  necessary  to  its  objectivex^ 
realisation — with  the  dream  of  a  lover  who  attributes 
to  the  object  of  his  affection  all  the  excellences 
which  he  can  conceive  or  desire,  and  which, 
perhaps,  were  never  united  in  any  one  person,  v 
Kant  replies :  "  I  quite  agree  with  Professor  Wizen- 
mann in  all  cases  where  the  feeling  of  want  is  due 
to  mere  inclination.  Such  a  want  cannot  postulate 
the  existence  of  the  object  desired,  even  for  him 
who  feels  it  :  still  less  can  it  be  the  ground  of  a 
postulate  which  is  universal.  In  this  case,  how- 
ever, we  have  a  want  of  reason,  springing  not  from 
the  subjective  ground  of  our  wishes,  but  from  an 
objective     ground    of    the    will,    which    binds    every 


THE  LOGIC  OF  SUBJECTIVE  RELIGION.     341 

rational  being,  and  thence  authorises  him  a  'priori 
to  presuppose  in  nature  the  conditions  necessary 
I'or  its  satisfaction."  In  other  words,  Kant  holds 
that  there  are  certain  tendencies  in  us  which  do 
not  belong  to  our  nature  as  individuals,  with  special 
feelings  determined  by  heredity  and  circumstance ; 
but  which  are  the  pure  expression  of  our  rational 
nature,  of  that  in  us  which  lifts  us  above  our  finite 
and  phenomenal  individuality.  And  for  these 
tendencies  we  may  reasonably  expect,  nay,  we  have 
a  right  to  expect,  to  find  a  satisfaction  provided. 
Thus  there  is  in  us  a  desire,  not  merely  to  have 
o\ir  wrongs  righted  and  our  happiness  secured, — or 
even  to  see  these  ends  attained  by  certain  persons 
or  classes  in  which  we  are  interested, — but  a 
desire  to  see  right  triumphant  for  the  sake  of 
right ;  a  desire  for  the  realisation  of  a  social  order 
in  which  universal  goodness  shall  be  joined  to 
universal  happiness,  not  because  of  any  good  which 
wc  might  derive  from  it,  but  simply  because  we 
are  obliged  to  think  of  such  an  order  as  highest 
and  best.  It  is  Kant's  view  that  such  desires,  and 
such  alone,  carry  with  them  the  assurance  of  the 
possibility  and,  indeed,  of  the  necessity,  of  their 
satisfaction.  Thus  the  very  universality,  the  infinite 
character,  of  the  ends  in  question,  which  makes  it 
impossible  empirically  to  understand  how  they  can 
be  realised,   is   regarded   by  him,  not   as  a  reason   to 


342  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RELIGION. 

doubt  the  possibility  of  their  realisation,  but  rather 
as  taking  them  altogether  out  of  the  category  of 
ends,  whose  realisation  need  be  a  matter  of  doubt, 
or  whose  certainty  is  dependent  upon  calculation. 
We  are  obliged  to  regard  them  as  the  ends  for 
which  all  things  exist ;  and  we  cannot,  therefore, \ 
reasonably  ask  by  what  special  means  they  are  to 
be  attained, 

"With  this  agrees  Kant's  conception  of  the  moral 
law  itself,  which,  according  to  his  view  of  it,  carries 
with  it  the  certitude  that  it  can  be  realised  by  every 
one  who  hears  its  commands.  For  the  central  char- 
acteristic of  the  moral  consciousness  is  that  it  lifts 
us  above  the  region  of  calculation  as  to  means  and  \ 
ends,  and  makes  us  set  aside  as  irrelevant  all  ques- 
tions as  to  the  possibility  of  the  actions  it  prescribes 
to  us.  The  categorical  imperative  of  duty  is  an 
absolute  demand  which  is  made  upon  us,  or  rather 
which  we  make  upon  ourselves,  without  any  previous 
consideration  as  to  what  is  attainable.  The  con- 
sciousness that  we  '  ought '  is  at  once  to  be  taken 
as  sufficient  evidence  that  we  '  can.'  When  we  think  \^ 
of  life  in  this  point  of  view,  we  are  obliged  i-pso  facto 
to  throw  aside  our  finite  weights  and  measures ;  we 
cease  to  consult  with  flesh  and  blood;  we  defy  augury 
and  go  forward  trusting  in  our  ideal  without,  and 
sometimes  against,  all  calculation.  We  are  to  say 
with  Hector :    "  It   is  the   one  best  omen  of  success 


THE  LOGIC  OF  SUBJECTIVE  RELIGION.     343 

that  we  fight  for  fatherland."  We  are  to  say  with 
Danton:  "Impossible!  do  not  name  to  me  that  stupid 
word."  The  sense  of  power  is  not  here  to  anticipate, 
but  to  follow  upon  the  resolve  to  act.  For  it  is  futile 
to  weigh  spirit  against  matter,  or  to  use  at  once  the 
scales  of  worldly  prudence  and  the  standard  of  moral 
right.  We  are  to  assume  that  the  former  will  adjust 
itself,  like  everything  else  in  the  world,  to  the  latter. 
High  moral  achievement  can  never  be  attained  by 
one  who  anxiously  weighs  the  empirical  considera- 
tions that  make  for  and  against  the  practicability 
of  the  course  of  action  which  he  regards  as  best. 
"  Impossible,"  says  one  of  the  bravest  of  Shakespeare's 
heroines,  "impossible  be  strange  attempts  to  such  as 
weigh  their  pains  in  sense."  Every  great  deed  has 
seemed  impossible  till  it  was  done.  And  even  in 
the  sphere  of  moral  deeds  which  have  no  claim  to 
the  name  of  greatness,  a  certain  courage  of  faith  is 
constantly  required  of  those  that  would  act  rightly. 
We  cannot  be  true  to  ourselves  unless  we  have  the 
power,  in  any  crisis  where  an  iipiportant  moral  de- 
cision is  necessary,  to  put  aside  the  spirit  of  cal- 
culation, and  to  believe  that  fidelity  to  our  best 
instincts   will  somehow   carry  us  through. 

But  if  this  faith  in  the  moral  imperative  be 
reasonable,  we  ought  clearly  to  realise  what  it  in- 
volves. It  does  not  mean,  strictly  speaking,  that 
"  to  do  right  is  wisdom  in  the  scorn  of  consequence," 


344  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RELIGION. 

unless  we  are  referring  merely  to  the  consequences 
to  ourselves ;  for  an  act  cannot,  except  by  a  false 
abstraction,  be  separated  from  its  consequences.  If 
it  is  reasonable  that  we  should  be  called  upon  to 
listen  to  the  demands  of  our  conscience  without 
empirically  calculating  the  consequences,  it  must  be 
on  the  ground  that  the  conscience  itself  yields 
not  only  a  higher,  but  a  truer  view  of  life  than 
any  empirical  calculation  could  enable  us  to  reach. 
In  other  words,  it  is  rational  so  to  act,  because  we 
are  really  taking  a  more  complete  and  comprehensive 
estimate  of  things,  and  especially  of  our  own  highest 
interests,  when  we  trust  in  what  is  called  the  ideal, 
than  when  we  hold  by  what  we  usually  call  the 
real.  If  it  is  not  a  fair  answer  to  the  claim  made 
in  behalf  of  the  moral  law :  "  You  ought,  therefore 
you  can,"  to  reply :  "  I  cannot,  therefore  I  ought  not," 
it  must  be  because  the  reply  comes  from  a  less 
reliable  source  than  the  first  assertion ;  in  other 
words,  the  moral  ideal  is  not  a  mere  subjective 
dream  of  perfection,  which  has  no  relation  to  the 
possibilities  of  our  actual  human  life ;  it  is  simply 
the  actual  itself,  as  seen  in  the  light  of  a  deeper 
reflexion,  which  detects  the  secret  forces  working  in 
it.  On  this  view,  we  are  called  upon  to  disregard 
what  is,  as  against  what  ought  to  he,  because,  after  all, 
our  consciousness  of  what  ought  to  he  represents  what 
in  a  deeper  sense  really  is.      In  breaking  with  that 


THE  LOGIC  OF  SUBJECTIVE  RELIGION.     345 

which  is  empirically  calculable,  we  are  breaking  with 
superficial  appearances  that  we  may  reach  the  truth 
of  things.  Hence  also  the  obstructions  which,  in  the 
former  point  of  view,  seem  to  make  action  impossible, 
are,  in  the  latter,  rightly  regarded  as  shadows  which 
can  offer  no  effective  resistance.  For  it  is  absurd  to 
think  that  any  power  in  the  universe  can  ultimately 
defeat  those  who  have  the  divine  principle  of  the 
universe  on  their  side.  If,  therefore,  we  admit  the 
claims  of  the  moral  imperative  to  override  or  set  aside 
experience,  we  must  also  admit  the  farther  consequence 
that  "  morality  is  the  nature  of  things,"  and  that  what 
Kant  calls  the  '  postulates  of  reason '  are  true.  In 
other  words,  the  demands  or  aspirations  which  are 
connected  with  our  consciousness  of  the  moral  ideal 
are  not  merely  subjective  wishes ;  they  are  our  highest 
and  truest  revelation  of  the  nature  of  the  universe,  and 
M  that  divine  principle  upon  which  it  depends.  And 
if  God,  freedom,  and  immortality  be  necessary  postu- 
lates with  a  view  to  the  realisation  of  the  moral  ideal, 
then  they  have  for  us  the  same  evidence  as  the  moral 
ideal  itself 

Now,  I  have  given  this  answer — which  is  substan- 
tially the  answer  of  Kant — to  the  objections  usually 
brought  against  subjective  religion,  not  because  I  re- 
gard it  as  finally  satisfactory,  but  because  it  throws 
light  on  the  nature  of  the  difficulties  in  which  such 
religion   is   involved,   and  indicates   the   only  way  in 


i 


346  TBE  EVOLUTION  OF  RELIGION. 

which  those  difficulties  can  be  met  with  any  show  of 
reason.  Kant,  in  fact,  only  makes  explicit  a  process 
of  thought  which  we  can  detect  in  all  cases  where 
appeal  is  made  from  outward  experience  to  inward 
conviction,  from  consciousness  to  self-consciousness. 
In  brief,  his  argument  is  that,  when  we  abstract 
from  outward  experience  and  purify  our  minds  from 
all  those  impulses  which  are  due  to  our  nature  as 
objects  and  our  relations  to  other  objects, — when,  that 
is,  we  leave  out  of  account  all  that  belongs  to  the 
phenomenal  side  of  our  being, — we  still  find  within 
us,  bound  up  with  the  practical  consciousness  of 
ourselves  as  moral  beings,  ideas  of  the  world,  the 
aoul,  and  God,  which  have  a  higher  truth  than  all 
our  empirical  knowledge.  For  it  is  this  practical 
consciousness  and  its  postulates  which  alone  reveal 
to  us  what  we  really  are,  and  what  is  our  relation 
to  God  as  the  absolute  Eeality.  It  is  thus  for 
us  the  legitimate  ground  of  a  faith  which  goes 
beyond  all  our  knowledge.  Now,  in  this  reasoning, 
Kant,  as  I  have  just  said,  is  only  making  explicit 
the  logic  which  underlies  subjective  religion  in  all 
its  forms — from  the  extreme  form  of  Buddhism,  in 
which  the  subject  is  altogether  torn  away  from  the 
object,  to  the  Judaic  form,  in  which  the  latter  is 
merely  subordinated  to  the  former,  and  even  to  the 
partial  revival  of  the  Judaic  spirit  in  modern  Pro- 
testantism. 


\ 


THE  LOGIC  OF  SUBJECTIVE  RELIGION.     347 

It  will,  however,  be  easier  to  appreciate  the  merits 
and  defects,  the  partial  truth  and  the  partial  un- 
truth of  this  mode  of  religious  thought,  after  we  have 
followed  it  out  in  the  concrete,  in  the  historical 
development  of  the  different  religions  of  this  type. 


LECTURE    THIRTEENTH. 

THE    SUBJECTIVE    EELIGIONS BUDDHISM    AND    THE 

PHILOSOPHICAL    RELIGION    OF   THE   STOICS. 

The  Logic  of  Subjective  Religion  in  Kant — Hoio  such  Religion 
arises  in  the  Life  of  Individuals  and  Nations — Development  of 
Buddhism  out  of  Vedic  Pantheism — The  Absolute  Self  of  the 
Upanishads — The  Great  Deliverance  of  Buddha — Its  Negative 
Character — Place  of  Universal  Charity  in  its  Moral  Code — S^lb- 
jective  Movement  of  Greek  TliouglU  in  Anaxagoras  and  Socrates 
— Partial  Restoration  of  an  Objective  Vieiv  of  Things  in  Plato 
and  Aristotle — Final  Triumph  of  Subjective  Individualism- — 
Comparison  of  Stoicism  with  Buddhism — How  Stoicism  combines 
its  Subjective  Ethics  with  Religion. 

In  the  last  Lecture  I  explained  Kant's  way  of  vindi-  \ 
eating  morality  and  religion  against  the  doctrine  of 
what  is  now  commonly  called  Positivism.  Positivism, 
as  a  philosophical  system,  seeks  to  universalise  the 
principles  upon  which  science  explains  the  phenomena 
of  matter,  and  thereby  to  exclude  from  the  world,  or 
at  least  from  the  knowable  world,  everything  that  does 
not  fall  under  the  necessity  of  nature.  Kant  answers, 
not  by   denying   the  validity   of  the  principles  upon 


BUDDHISM  AND  STOICISM.  349 

which  science  is  based,  or  by  asserting  the  existence 
of  any  exceptions  to  the  reign  of  law  which  it  seeks 
to  establish,  but  by  showing  that  the  system  of  nature 

\  implies  a  principle  which  is  above  nature.  His  first 
step,  therefore,  is  to  point  out  that  all  objects  are 
relative  to  the  conscious  self,  and  that,  this  being  so, 
the  self  cannot  be  brought  under  the  laws  it  applies 
to  objects.  And  his  second  step  is  to  maintain  that 
the  pure  consciousness  of  self  is  the  source  of  a 
1  universal  law,  which  binds  us  as  subjects  irrespective 
of  special  circumstances  of  our  individual  existence  as 
objects,  standing  in  definite  relations  to  other  objects. 
Furthermore,  he  maintains  that  with  the  consciousness 
of  this  law  there  necessarily  goes  a  conviction  of  the 

/  possibility  of  realising  it,  and  a  belief  in  the  existence 
of  all  the  conditions  that  are  required  for  such  reali- 
sation. Thus,  by  our  subjective  consciousness  of  self 
we  are  lifted  above  the  phenomenal  world  and  all  the 
limitations  under  which  it  exists  as  an  object  of 
V  knowledge ;  and,  at  the  same  time,  we  gain  an  insight 
— incomplete  indeed,  but  certain — into  a  reality  which 
is  not  phenomenal.  We  rise  to  faith  in  a  God,  who 
is  fulfilling  in  the  outward  world  the  law  of  our 
spirits,  and,  therefore,  to  a  certainty  that  the  moral 
end  to  which  that  law  points  is  attainable,  and, 
indeed,  that  it  will  necessarily  be  attained. 

My    object    in     thus     dealing    with     the    Kantian 
theory,    however,    was     not     to     criticise     Kant,    but 


350  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RELIGION. 

to  show  the  nature  of  the  subjective  uiovement  of 
reflexion,  of  which  he  is  the  greatest  philosophical 
exponent.  For  the  Kantian  philosophy  exhibits, 
in  the  clearest  and  most  explicit  form,  the  inner  logic 
of  the  process  which  gives  rise  to  the  second  of  the 
three  great  types  of  religion  of  which  we  have  spoken. 
In  other  words,  it  reveals  to  us  the  rationale  of  the 
change  from  objective  to  subjective  religion.  To  the 
earliest  consciousness  of  the  individual  and  the  race, 
nothing  can  present  itself  except  in  an  external  form. 
In  this  stage  even  the  subject  has  to  be  conceived 
simply  as  one  of  its  own  objects ;  and,  as  a  necessary 
consequence,  God  also,  the  absolute  unity  of  subject 
and  object,  must  find  some  outward  form  in  which 
to  reveal  or  to  hide  His  infinitude.  At  the  same 
time,  even  while  this  external  way  of  representa- 
tion prevails,  it  is  not  to  be  supposed  that  men  are 
entirely  satisfied  with  it.  On  the  contrary,  there 
is  scarcely  a  single  man  who  does  not  at  times  see 
or  feel  its  inadequacy,  although  he  may  be  at  a 
loss  to  describe  exactly  what  is  v/anting  to  it. 
Almost  all  men  at  some  period  or  another, — most 
frequently  in  the  crisis  of  youtli,  in  which  they  first 
become  intellectually  awakened  to  the  mystery  of  life, — 
recoil  upon  themselves  from  the  inadequacy  of  the 
world.  They  may  not  be  able,  like  Kant,  to  work 
out  the  objective  view  of  things  to  its  result,  and 
explicitly  to  recognise  where  it  fails.      But  the  sense 


BUDDHISM  AND  STOICISM.  351 

of  the  transitoriness,  the  ilhisiveness,  and  the  imper- 
fection of  the  world,  as  it  is  revealed  in  our  outward 
experience  of  it,  throws  them  back  upon  themselves, 
and  makes  them  seek  within  for  what  they  fail  to  find 
without.  They  become  for  the  time  like  subjective 
idealists  in  their  sense  of  the  solitariness  of  the  indi- 
vidual soul,  and  their  own  image  seems  to  stand 
between  them  and  the  world.  Still  more  clearly  we 
may  trace  the  same  movement  in  the  history  of  the 
race.  Fichte  in  Germany,  and  Carlyle  in  this  country, 
have  made  it  almost  a  common-place  of  the  philo- 
sophy of  history  that  there  are  two  periods  in  national 
development,  a  period  of  intuition  and  faith,  and  a 
period  of  reflexion  and  criticism.  In  the  former 
period  the  nation  is  occupied  in  forming  its  national 
beliefs,  and  expressing  them  in  appropriate  outward 
symbols ;  in  building  up  its  characteristic  type  of 
national  institutions  and  customs,  and  in  asserting 
itself  against  the  world.  In  the  latter  period  there  is 
a  decay  of  faith,  a  growing  spirit  of  criticism,  a  relax- 
ation in  the  energy  of  the  political  life  of  the  people, 
and  a  feeling  of  discord  with  circumstances  in  indi- 
viduals. At  this  stage  the  higher  minds  show  an 
inclination  to  turn  back  upon  themselves,  to  separate 
themselves  from  their  social  environment,  to  quarrel 
with  the  religious  ideas  and  institutions  which  have 
been  evolved  by  the  national  genius,  and  to  seek  a 
kingdom   in    their   own   souls.      The   spiritual   life   of 


352  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RELIGION. 

man  thus  takes  on  a  subjective  and  individualistic 
colour.  Morality  ceases  to  be  the  acceptance  of  the 
social  duties  which  arise  out  of  the  life  of  citizenship, 
and  becomes  the  obedience  of  the  individual  to  the  ^ 
inner  law  of  his  own  being,  Eeligion  ceases  to  be  the 
worship  of  God  who  is  revealed  in  outward  nature,  or 
in  the  social  order  of  the  family  and  the  State,  and 
becomes  a  reverence  for  a  divine  power  that  speaks 
only,  or  mainly,  in  the  soul  of  the  individual. 

Now,  as  I  have  already  said,  the  second  type  of 
religion  thus  originated  is,  like  the  first,  abstract  and 
imperfect.  It  must,  therefore,  give  rise  to  tlie  same 
conflict  of  matter  and  form  which  was  fatal  to 
the  objective  type  ;  for  the  subjective  without  the 
objective  is  as  unreal  as  the  objective  without  the 
subjective.  Still  it  remains  true  that  the  subjec- 
tive movement  indicates  a  relative  advance  in  man's 
consciousness  of  himself,  of  the  world  and  of  \ 
God.  For,  although  tlie  mind  turned  back  upon 
itself  may  become  troubled  and  unhealthy,  yet  its 
pain  and  disease  are  necessary  steps  in  the  way 
to  a  higher  life.  He  who  has  never  got  beyond  the 
simple  objective  view  of  things,  never  felt  the  pains  of 
inner  loneliness,  nor  the  agony  of  a  self  that  cannot 
escape  from  its  own  shadow,  is  incapable  of  rising  to 
that  highest  feeling  of  peace  with  God  and  man, 
which  is  not  a  sense  of  untroubled  unity,  but  the 
consciousness    of   a    unity   won    out    of   division,    not 


BUDDHISM  AND  STOICISM.  353 

the  mere  instinct  of  natural  affection,  but  a  love  born 
of  the  conquest  of  self.  For  the  reflexion  which 
breaks  the  immediate  bonds  of  man  to  nature,  and  of 
man  to  man,  is  necessary  to  the  development  of  that 
independent  spiritual  life,  that  consciousness  of  being  a 
law  and  an  end  to  ourselves,  upon  which  alone  a  truly 
spiritual  union  can  be  based. 

Now,  if  we  confine  our  view  to  pre-Christian  times,i 
there  are  three  important  examples  of  this  kind  of 
subjective  religion  and  subjective  morality  which  I  am 
descril)ing.  These  are  (1)  Buddhism,  (2)  the  philo- 
sophical religion  of  later  Greece,  and  most  important 
of  all,  (3)  the  "  ethical  monotheism  "  of  the  Jews,  as  it 
manifested  itself  in  the  later  prophets  and  the  psalmists. 
Each  of  these  has  special  peculiarities  of  its  own,  but 
they  are  all  examples  of  that  kind  of  religion  which 
arises  when  man  turns  back  from  the  objective  to  the 
subjective,  and  finds  the  voice  of  God  mainly  in  the 
inner  shrine  of  the  heart.  In  this  lecture  I  shall 
speak  of  the  two  former,  reserving  for  the  follow- 
ing lectures  what  I  have  to  say  of  the  religion  of  the 
Jews. 

In  Buddhism  we  have  the  first  and  extremest 
instance  of  recoil  upon  the  subjective,  a  recoil,  the 
vehemence  of  which  is  made  more  intelligible  to  us 

1  It  will  be  sliown  in  the  sequel  that  there  is  a  modified  rej^e- 
titioii  both  of  the  objective  and  of  the  subjective  type  of  religion 
in  the  history  of  Christianity. 

VOL.  I.  "      Z 


354  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RELIGION. 

by   the    modern    reproduction   of  it  in    Schopenhauer,  x 
In  a  former  lecture^  I  spoke  of  the  way  in  which  the 
Vedic  religion  culminated  in  a  pantheism  which  was 
also  an  '  akosmism,'  i.e.,  which  regarded  all  the  objec- 
tive forms  of  nature  as  well  as  of  human  life,  and  all 
mythological   idealisations   of   these    forms   which   had 
been  constructed  by  the  imagination  of  the  Vedic  poets,    . 
—  all  finite  things  and  beings,  and  all  the  deities  formed 
in  their  image, — as  parts  of  the  great  world-illusion. 
All  this  is  an  illusion  of  diversity  and  change,  beneath 
which  is  concealed  the  one  real  being,  permanent,  un- 
changeable, and  absolute  ;  the  one  divine  substance,  of 
which,  however,  all  we  can  say  is,  that  it  'is.'      Such 
pantheism,  as  we  have  seen,  the  euthanasia  of  objective  \ 
religion ;  for  he  who  looks  away  from  the  particular  to 
the  universal,  from  sense  to  thought,  must  in  the  long 
run   turn   his  eyes  back  from  all  objects  to  the  self, 
as  the   one   principle    to    which   they  are  all  equally 
related.       Accordingly,  in  the  Upanishads  the  absolute 
is  already  identified  with  the  real  Self,  and  the  abstrac- 
tion   which    lifts    us   above   particular   objects   passes  • 
into  the   reflexion    which    makes   us  turn  away  from 
objects    altogether,    and    direct    our    thoughts   to    the 
subject  within  us.      As  we  read  in  the  Katha-Upani- 
shad,^  "  The  Self-existent  pierced  the  openings  (of  the 
senses)  so  that  they  turn  forward ;  therefore  man  looks 
forward,  not  backward  unto  liimself.      Some  wise  man, 
'  Vol.  i.,  p.  262.  -Sacred  Books  of  the  East,  xv.  15-19. 


BUDDHISM  AND  STOICISM.  355 

liov-ever,  loith  his  eijcs  closed  and  vnshinfj  for  immorkdlty, 
saw  the  Self  behind."  ..."  The  wise,  when  he 
knows  that  that  by  which  he  perceives  all  objects  in 
sleep  and  in  waking  is  the  great  omnipresent  Self, 
grieves  no  more."  "  As  the  sun,  the  eye  of  the  whole 
world,  is  not  contaminated  by  the  external  impurities 
seen  by  the  eyes,  thus  the  one  Self  within  all  things  is 
never  contaminated  by  the  misery  of  the  world,  being 
himself  without."  "  There  is  one  eternal  thinker, 
thinking  non-eternal  thoughts,  who,  though  one,  fulfils 
the  desires  of  many.  The  wise  who  perceive  him 
within  their  Self,  to  them  belongs  eternal  peace,  not  to 
others."  On  this  view,  the  external  world  is  "the 
stuff  that  dreams  are  made  of,"  and  the  outwardly 
directed  eye  sees  not  anything  Ijut  illusion.  Hence 
also  the  desires  that  objects  awake  in  us  are  vain 
and  illusive.  For  they  are  chains  which,  by  uniting 
us  to  the  transitory  and  illusory  world,  make  us  the 
victims  of  an  outward  fatality ;  and  this  fatality,  ac- 
cording to  the  Indian  belief,  extends  not  only  to  one 
life,  but  to  an  unlimited  series  of  lives,  in  which  the 
individual  returns  again  and  again  to  the  world  of 
shows  under  different  shapes.  For,  so  long  as  desire 
continues,  it  binds  him  to  the  illusion  of  life.  So  long, 
therefore,  he  must  revolve  in  the  purposeless  vicissitude 
of  birth  and  death,  escaping  from  one  form  of  transitory 
existence  only  to  be  reimprisoned  in  another.  "He  who 
forms  desires  within  his  mind  is  born  a^ain  through 


356  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RELIGION. 

his  desires  here  and  there/"  To  escape  this  fate,  we 
must  cut  through  the  links  of  the  chain  that  binds 
us  to  the  wheel  of  necessity ;  we  must  close  the 
openings  of  sense  through  which  the  outward  world 
affects  us,  and  root  out  the  desires  that  make  us 
seek  an  unreal  happiness  in  it.  Then,  when  we  have 
done  this,  we  shall  be  identified  with  "  Brahman,"  with 
the  Universal  Self,  the  only  Being  which  is  absolutely 
real,  and  in  which  the  satisfaction  of  the  soul  can 
be  found.  In  this  way  alone  can  we  reach  that 
harmony  with  self  which  is  at  the  same  time  harmony 
with  God,  and  free  ourselves  from  the  false  dream  of 
individuality,  which  draws  us  onward  through  life 
after  life  in  the  endless  vicissitude,  yet  endless  re- 
petition of  the  finite,  continually  tempting  us  with  the 
hope  of  finding  without,  a  good  which  can  be  found 
only  within.  For  what  we  really  seek  far  off  in  other 
objects  is  always  near  us :  it  is  our  very  inmost  self. 
"  Verily  a  wife  is  not  dear  that  you  may  love  the  wife; 
but  that  you  may  love  the  Self,  therefore  a  wife  is  dear. 
Verily  the  worlds  are  not  dear  that  you  may  love  the 
worlds ;  but  that  you  may  love  the  Self,  therefore  the 
worlds  are  dear."^ 

This  creed,  taught  already  in   the  final  philosophic 
interpretation  of  the  Vedas,  is  the  fundamental  con- 
ception from  which  the  religion  of  Buddha  starts,  and 
which  he  works  out  fearlessly  to  its  ultimate  conse- 
1  Sacred  Books  of  the  East,  xv.  40.      -M  p.  109,  cf.  163  seq. 


BUDDHISM  AND  STOICISM.  357 

quences.  Struggle,  pain,  and  evil  are  to  Buddha  the 
necessary  results  of  desire,  and  desire  itself  is  the 
necessary  result  of  the  illusion  in  which  the  soul 
that  looks  beyond  itself  is  necessarily  entangled. 
Hence  the  miserable  existence  of  all  finite  creatures 
who  permit  themselves  to  be  tempted  onward  through 
the  endless  transmigrations  of  a  world  of  shows,  in 
which  they  never  meet  with  anything  real  or  per- 
manent. Who  will  deliver  us  from  this  endless 
vicissitude  of  emptiness  ?  "  No  one,"  answers  Buddha, 
"  can  deliver  another,  but  each  one  by  the  aid  of  my 
doctrine,  can  deliver  himself."  In  nothing  is  Buddha 
more  emphatic  than  in  thus  sending  everyone  back 
upon  himself.  According  to  the  "  Book  of  the  Great 
Decease,"  which  appears  to  be  one  of  the  most 
authentic  records  of  early  Buddhism,  Buddha  answered 
the  last  appeal  of  his  followers  for  more  instruction  by 
dwelling  upon  his  own  weakness,  as  the  mere  '  earthen 
vessel '  through  whom  the  great  message  had  come, 
and  by  referring  them  to  the  light  which  each  man 
can  find  in  his  own  soul. 

"  What,  then,  Ananda  ?  Does  the  order  expect  that 
of  me  ?  I  have  preached  the  truth  without  making 
any  distinction  between  exoteric  and  esoteric  doctrine: 
for,  in  respect  of  the  truths,  Ananda,  the  Tathagata,^ 

1  One  of  the  names  given  to  Buddha.  Ananda  is  the 
'  beloved  disciple  '  of  Buddha,  who  stands  nearest  to  his 
person. 


358  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RELIGION. 

has  no  such  thing  as  the  closed  hst  of  a  teacher  who 
keeps  some  things  back.  Surely,  Ananda,  should 
there  be  any  one  who  harbours  the  thought,  '  It  is  I 
who  will  lead  the  brotherhood,'  it  is  he  who  should 
lay  down  instructions  in  any  matter  concerning  the 
order.  Now  the  Tathagata  thinks  not  that  it  is  he 
who  should  lead  the  brotherhood,  or  that  the  order  is 
dependent  upon  him.  Why  then  should  he  leave  in- 
structions in  any  matter  concerning  the  order  ?  I,  too, 
0  Ananda,  am  now  grown  old,  and  full  of  years,  my 
journey  is  drawing  to  a  close,  I  have  reached  my  sum 
of  days,  I  am  turning  eighty  years  of  age ;  and  just 
as  a  worn-out  cart  can  only  with  much  additional 
care  be  made  to  move  along,  so  methinks  the  bod}- 
of  the  Tathagata  can  only  be  kept  going  with  much 
additional  care.  It  is  only,  Ananda,  when  the  Tatha- 
gata, ceasing  to  attend  to  any  outward  thing,  or  to 
experience  any  sensation,  becomes  plunged  in  that 
devout  meditation  of  heart  which  is  concerned  with  no 
material  object — it  is  only  then  that  the  body  of  the 
Tathagata  is  at  ease." 

"  Therefore,  0  Ananda,  be  ye  lamps  unto  your- 
selves. Be  ye  a  refuge  unto  yourselves.  Betake 
yourselves  to  no  external  refuge.  Hold  fast  to  the 
Truth  as  a  lamp.  Hold  fast  as  a  refuge  to  the 
truth.  Look  not  for  refuge  to  any  one  but  your- 
selves." ^ 

1  Sacred  Boctks  of  the   East,   .xi.  37.     C'f.   the  Dhammupada 


BUDDHISM  AND  STOICISM.  359 

Sir  Edwin  Arnold  is  therefore  speaking  in  the  true 
spirit  of  Buddha  when  he  makes  him  exhort  his 
followers  to  turn  from  outward  seeming  to  the  truth 
revealed  within,  in  the  following  terms : — 

"  This  is  enougli  tf)  know.     Tlie  phantasms  are 
The  heavens,  earths,  worlds,  and  changes  changing  them, 
A  mighty  whirling  wheel  of  shape  and  show 
Which  none  can  stay  or  stem. 
Pray  not.     The  darkness  will  not  lighten.     Ask 
Nought  from  the  silence,  for  it  cannot  speak  I 
Vex  not  yoiu'  mournful  mind  with  pious  pains. 
Ah  !    brothers,  sisters,  seek 

Nought  from  the  helpless  gods  by  gift  or  hymn. 
Nor  bribe  with  blood,  nor  feed  with  fruit  and  cakes. 
Within  yourselves  deliverance  must  be  sought, 
Each  man  his  prison  makes. 
Ye  suffer  from  yourselves,  none  else  compels, 
None  other  holds  you  that  ye  live  and  die. 
And  whirl  upon  the  wheel  of  change  and  turn 
Its  spokes  of  agony."  ^ 

The  deliverance  of  Buddha  is  simple.  It  is  to 
accept  the  doctrine  that  shows  the  illusion  to  be  an 
illusion,  and  so  to  wither  up  the  springs  of  all  desires 
which  presuppose  that  it  is  a  reality.  But  this  deliver- 
ance, as  it  is  conceived  by  the  Buddhist,  carries  him  a 
step  farther.  For  the  subjective  consciousness,  which 
is  thus  freed  from  the  illusion  of  objective  existence, 

>$  165  :  Sacred  Books  of  the  East,  x.  46  :   "  By  oneself  the  evil  is 
done,  by  oneself  one  suffers  ;  by  oneself  evil  is  left  undone,  by 
oneself  one  is  purified.     Purity  and  impurity  belong  to  oneself, 
no  one  can  purify  another."     Cf.  the  rest  of  ch.  12. 
1  The  Light  of  the  East. 


); 


360  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RELIGION. 

is   by  the  same   process   emptied   of   all  its   contents : 
those    contents    consisting    just    in     its     relations    to 
objects.     With    the   extinction   of  all   relations,   even 
negative     relations,     to    objects,     the     subject     itself 
would  disappear.      Hence  for   the   Buddhist   the  last 
illusion   to  be  destroyed  is  the  existence   of  the   in- 
dividual self;  for  the  desire  that  this  individual  self 
should  be  preserved  is  the  root,  or  parent,  of  all  other 
desires  that  enslave  us  to  external  things,  and  bind  us 
on  the  wheel  of  change.      The   '  will  to  live '  is   the 
root  of  all  evil,  and  the  last  enemy  to  be  destroyed 
by  him  who  is   seeking  for  freedom  from   the  sorrow 
of  the  world.      Hence  in  loosing  itself  from  outward 
things,  the   will  must  finally  loose  itself  from   itself. 
The  illusion  of  life  is   the  whole  content  of  life,  and 
therefore  the  self  will  itself  disappear  along  with  the 
shows  against  which  it  fights.      Peace  and  rest  for  the 
weary    are    to    be    found,    not     in     self-mortification, 
though  that  is   on   the  way  to  it :   not   even   in   utter 
unselfishness  or   universal    benevolence    to   all    things 
that  live,  though  that   is   far  on   the  way  to  it :   but 
only  in  the  absolute  dying  out  of  the  light  of  self- 
consciousness  for  want  of  fuel,  the  extinction  of  life 
and  thought  through  the  extinction  of  the  will  to  live, 
the  peace  of  Nirvana  which  is  untroubled  with  any 
breath   of   vain   desire,   the   peace   of  the   '  dewdrop ' 
which   '  melts  into   the  silent  sea '   never  to    be  dis- 
tinguished from  it  again. 


BUDDHISM  AND  STOICISM.  361 

This  is  the  strange  faith  in  which  many  centuries 
ago  India  found  healing  for  its  pains,  and  deliver- 
ance from  the  aimlessness  and  meanness  of  a  life 
in  which  men  were  no  longer  bound  together  by 
effective  national  bonds  or  animated  by  worthy  social 
ambitions.  The  nobler  spirits  of  India — thrown  back 
upon  themselves  from  a  world  in  which  they  could 
no  longer  see  any  divine  power  revealed,  but  only 
a  vain  cycle  of  meaningless  change ;  in  which  an 
empty  desire  was  ever  re-awaking  to  be  anew  cheated 
by  a  transitory  and  unreal  satisfaction — sought  to 
find  peace  just  by  ridding  themselves  of  every 
thought  and  feeling  that  was  bound  up  with  such 
a  world.  Nor  did  they  shrink  when  they  found 
that  even  the  self  must  be  extinguished  in  order 
to  be  freed  from  its  pain.  Hence  the  Buddhist 
rises  to  an  all-embracing  love  or  charity  for  all 
beings,  immersed  like  himself  in  the  pains  of 
existence,  only  in  the  end  to  lose  himself  and  all  i 
his  fellow  creatures  in  the  empty  peace  of  Nirvana,/ 
which  is  only  not  death  because  it  is  conceived  so ' 
to  speak  as  the  death  of  death,  the  extinction  of  a 
life  which  is  worse  than  death.  Such  an  attitude- 
of  mind  is  explicable  only  as  the  extreme  of  the 
refigiou  of  subjectivity,  in  which  even  subjectivity 
loses  its  meaning.  And  from  this  also  we  are  able 
to  explain  why  Buddhism  had  power  only  as  a 
protest  or  as  a  negative  deliverance  from  the  world. 


362  THE  EVOLUTION  OE  RELIGIOA. 

which  led  to  no  positive  rej^eneratiou  of  it.  8ul»- 
jective  religion  is  valuable  mainly  as  a  stage  of 
transition,  from  a  lower  religion  which  is  merely 
objective,  to  a  higher  religion  which  is  both  objec- 
tive and  subjective.  In  the  case  of  Buddha,  how- 
ever, the  recoil  was  so  violent  that  the  movement 
of  progress  was  broken  off;  and  the  result  was  to 
provoke  a  reaction  against  the  creed  which  had 
emptied  heaven  of  all  its  gods,  and  to  liring  about 
a  return  to  the  very  superstitions  which  Buddhism 
had   condemned  and  overthrown. 

At  the  same  time  it  is  necessary  to  remember 
one  thing  in  qualification  of  this  judgment.  It  is 
always  a  little  unfair  to  estimate  any  movement 
of  religious  thouglit  in  the  light  of  its  utmost  logical 
consequences :  for,  at  least  in  the  first  instance,  the 
intellectual  and  moral  value  of  such  a  movement 
depends  mainly,  not  on  the  goal  to  which  it  tends 
but  on  the  course  which  it  takes  in  the  en- 
deavour to  reach  that  goal  ;  and  also,  we  may 
add,  on  its  relation  to  the  earlier  forms  of  re- 
ligion which  it  opposes.  Buddhism  is  primarily  a 
protest  against  a  superstitious  polytheism,  with  the 
social  disorganisation  which  accompanied  it ;  but  in 
its  recoil  upon  the  inner  life  of  the  subject,  it 
overbalanced  itself  and  ultimately  lost  all  things, 
even  the  subject  itself,  in  the  silence  of  Nirvana. 
Yet,   on    tlie    way   to    this    result,   it   passes   through 


1/ 


BUDDHISM  AND  STOICISM.  363 

many    moral    and    religious    experiences    which    point 
to  a  higher  idea  of  good  than   that  which  it  finally 
reaches.      Escaping    from   the   pitfall   of  mere  asceti- 
cism and  self-torture,  into  which  the  Indian  devotee 
was  so  apt  to  fall,  Buddha  declares  that  the  austeri- 
ties   of   the    religious    life    may    indicate    the    same 
impure    and    self-seeking    spirit    which    is   shown   Ijy 
the     life    of    luxury,    and,    in    short,    that,     "  bodily 
exercise"  in  itself  "profiteth  nothing."      "Not  naked- 
ness,   nor    platted    hair,    nor    dirt,    not    fasting,    nor 
lying    on    the    earth,    not    rubbing    with    dust,    not 
sitting  motionless,  can  purify  a  mortal  who  has  not 
overcome  desires.      He    who,  though    dressed    in    tine 
apparel,     exercises    tranquillity,     is     quiet,     subdued, 
restrained,  chaste,  and  has  ceased   to  find  fault  with 
other  beings,  he  indeed    is    a    Brahmana,  an  ascetic, 
a    friar."^       The    true    self-abnegation    consists    in    a 
detachment  from   the   world  which   makes   it   impos- 
sible for  any  outward  thing   to   become    our   master. 
"  Look   upon   the    world    as   a   bubble,    look    upon    it 
as   a   mirage :   the   king   of   death    does   not  see   him 
who   thus  looks   down   upon   the   world.""      And    this 
detachment  from  personal  feeling  and  desire  is  viewed 
at  the  same  time  as  involving  a  universal  sympathy, 
which,  as  it  makes    the  joys    and    sorrows   of  others 
affect    us    equally    with    our    own,    leaves    no    room 

'^ Dhammapuda,  ^>$  \A\--1  :  SacTed  Books  of  the  East,  x.  38. 
2/(7.^170. 


:]VA  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RELIGION 

lor  hatred  or  uncharitableness,  tor  anger  or  revenge. 
Not  even  in  the  !New  Testament  do  we  find  the 
royal  law,  not  to  return  evil  for  evil  but  to  over- 
come evil  with  good,  more  explicitly  announced 
than  in  the  etliical  writings  of  the  Buddhists.  Thus 
in  the  Dliammcqmda  (or  Patlnvays  of  the  Law)  we 
read,  ""'He  abused  me,  he  beat  me,  he  defeated  me, 
he  robbed  me,' — in  those  who  harbour  such  thoughts 
hatred  will  never  cease.  'He  abused  me,  he  beat 
me,  he  defeated  me,  he  robbed  me,' — in  those  who  do 
not  harbour  such  thoughts  hatred  vnll  cease.  For 
hatred  does  not  cease  by  hatred  at  any  time  ; 
hatred  ceases  by  love,  this  is  an  old  rule."^  "Let 
a  man  overcome  anger  by  love,  let  him  overcome 
evil  by  good ;  let  him  overcome  the  greedy  by 
liberality,   the    liar    by    truth."- 

At  the  same  time  it  is  necessary  to  notice  that 
the  ground  upon  which  this  unselfish  spirit  is  incul- 
cated is  purely  negative,  i.e.  it  is  not  the  worth  of  \ 
the  higher  life  of  love,  but  the  worthlessness  of  the 
lower  life  of  selfish  desire — the  unreality  and  transi- 
toriness  of  all  finite  good — upon  which  the  main 
emphasis  is  laid.  "  The  world  does  not  know  that 
we  must  all  come  to  an  end  here ;  but  those  who 
know  it,  their  quarrels  cease  at  once."^  What  is  the 
use  of  quarrelling  about  that  which  is  worthless 
because  it  passes  away  ?  If,  therefore,  it  be  asked 
1  Dhammapada,  §§  3-5.         -Id.  §  223.         ^  Id.  %  6. 


BUDDHISM  AND  STOICISM.  365 

whether  the  Christian  idea  of  charity  is  a  higher 
thing  than  the  Buddhist  conception  of  a  sympathy 
which  passes  over  every  barrier  of  caste  and  race  and 
circumstance,  and  which  in  its  universality  embraces 
all  men  and  even  all  animals,  there  is  a  ready  answer. 
Buddhism,  like  the  abstract  Pantheism  it  opposes, 
has  no  distinguishing  respect  for  the  spiritual  nature 
of  man.  It  is  a  levelling  doctrine  which  meets  the 
indiscriminate  '  Whatever  is,  is  right,'  of  Brahmanism, 
with  an  equally  indiscriminate  '  Whatever  is,  is 
wrong.'  It  cannot  set  the  qualities  that  make  a  man, 
above  those  that  make  a  beast.  And  if  its  love 
extends  to  all  men,  and,  we  may  even  say,  to  all 
living  beings,  it  is  not  that  it  regards  them  as  having 
any  real  value  in  their  individual  existence,  but 
that  it  looks  upon  them  as  all  equally  sufferers 
from  the  misery  of  existing.  Hence  it  might  be 
said  that  the  universal  charity  of  the  Buddhist 
was  only  his  second  highest  virtue  ;  and  that  it  held 
even  so  high  a  place  as  this  only  because  such 
charity  is  the  negation  of  all  special  regard  for 
individual  things.  In  its  absence  of  personal  feel- 
ing universal  charity  is  nearest  to  that  absolute 
silence  of  thought  and  feeling  which  is  the  extinc- 
tion of  the  personal  self.  But  it  is  in  this 
natural  extinction  of  self,  and  not  in  the  moral 
extinction  of  selfishness  which  opens  the  way  to 
the   larger  life  of    love,  that  the   Buddhist  finds   the 


:]66  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RELIGION. 

liig'hest  bliss  and  perfection.  Or,  to  take  the  most 
fiivourable  view,  these  are  not,  in  liis  mind,  dis- 
tinguislied  from   each   other. 

Buddhism,  then,  may  be  taken  as  the  rcdudio  ad 
ahsurdum  of  subjective  religion,  for  it  is  that  ex- 
treme form  of  it  in  which  it  most  clearly  shows 
its  ouesidedness  and  imperfection  ;  in  which  indeed 
the  subjective  movement  is  carried  so  far  as  to 
break  off  all  connexion  with  the  object,  and  there- 
fore to  empty  the  subjective  life  itself  of  all  con- 
tents. It  not  only  sets  the  ideal  against  the  real, 
but  absolutely  opposes  the  former  to  the  latter,  and, 
as  a  necessary  consequence,  it  makes  the  ideal  purely 
negative.  Hence  also  it  distinguishes  itself  in  a 
peculiar  way  from  other  religions  of  the  subjective 
type.  For,  while  their  general  defect  lies  in  this — 
that  they  represent  the  Divine  Being,  who  is  properly 
the  unity  of  object  and  subject,  under  the  guise  of 
an  abstract  subject.  Buddhism  carries  the  opposition 
of  the  subject  to  the  object  so  far  that  it  cannot 
admit  their  unity  under  any  guise  whatever.  It  is, 
therefore,  a  religion  without  a  God.  We  might  even 
say,  it  is  an  ethics  without  a  religion,  were  it  not 
that  the  pure  negative  movement  of  thought  tends 
in  its  logical  result  to  dissolve  the  moral  as  well 
as  the  religious  life ;  for  the  opposition  of  the  moral, 
to  the  natural  loses  all  its  force  when  it  is  made 
absolute.      When   consciousness   is  thus   brought  into 


BUDDHISM  AND  STOICISM.  367 

complete  discord  with  itself,  atonement  is  not  possible. 
The  only  resource  left  is  that,  in  the  language  of  the 
Buddhists  themselves,  the  '  light '  of  consciousness 
should  be  '  blown  out.' 

In    Greece    the    subjective    movement    of    thought 
took  a  higher   character,   as   it   was  a  recoil   from   a 

f  much  higher  kind  of  objective  religion — a  religion 
in  which  the  object  worshipped  was  represented 
almost  exclusively  in  the  form  of  man.  For,  as 
man  is  a  thinking  subject  as  well  as  an  ol)ject,  so 
the  worship  of  anthropomorphic  deities  was  already 
a  disguised  worship  of  a  spiritual  princijile ;  and 
with  the  advance  of  Greek  art  and  poetry  this 
disguise  became  more  and  more  transparent.  The 
unity  of  nature  which  shone  through  the  diversity 
of  the  Vedic  polytheism,  was  indeed  concealed  and 
lost  in  the  multiplicity  of  the  humanised  gods ;  but 
as  the  consciousness  of  the  ideal  meaning  of  these 
'  fair  humanities  of  old  religion  '  awoke,  it  could  not 
but  prepare  men's  minds  for  the  conception  of  the 
spirituality  of  God.  In  this  way  the  diversity  of 
gods  which  have  emerged  from  the  unity  of  nature, 
tend  again  to  lose  themselves  in  the  unity  of  spirit. 
This     tendency     manifests     itself     in     the     liistory 

/  of  Greek  religion  by  the  early  exaltation  of  Zeus, 
who  is  placed  at  the  head  of  all  the  other 
gods  as  an  absolute  monarch,  while  the  other 
divine  powers   are   reduced    into    his   ministers  ;    but 


/ 


368  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RELIGION. 

it   reaches   its   logical   result   only   in  the  philosophy 
of  Greece. 

The  earliest  Greek  philosophy  sought  to  discover  \\ 
an  objectiye  principle  of  unity  in  the  world ;  but  / 
the  only  unity  it  reached  was  the  pantheistic  unity  \ 
of  a  highest  principle  or  substance,  which  remains 
one  with  itself  through  all  the  changes  of  phenomena. 
In  the  philosophy  of  Heraclitus  the  leading  thought 
is  still  that  of  a  law  of  necessity,  which  subjects 
to  itself  the  endless  play  of  the  contingent ;  just 
as  the  humanised  gods  were  subordinated  to  an  in- 
scrutable fate  which  they  could  not  avert  or  alter. 
But  with  Anaxagoras  the  idea  of  a  brute  necessity 
subjecting  all  to  itself  disappears,  and  in  its  place 
comes  the  idea  of  a  pure  spiritual  principle,  which, 
subdues  the  necessity  of  nature  and  uses  it  as  its 
own  instrument.  "All  things  were  in  chaos  till  reason 
came  and  arranged  them."  It  is  the  judgment  of 
Aristotle  that  in  giving  utterance  to  this  principle, 
Anaxagoras  was  speaking  the  first  sober  word  of 
Greek  philosophy,  while  all  before  him  had  been 
like  men  talking  at  random.  In  truth,  the  era 
of  subjective  reflexion  began  with  this  saying ; 
and  Socrates  was  only  following  out  the  same 
idea  in  a  new  application  when  he  made  con- 
scious reason  the  main  authority  in  morals,  and 
demanded  that  all  institutions,  customs,  and  rules 
should     justify    themselves     before     its     bar.        Like 


BUDDHISM  AND  STOICISM.  8G9 

Buddha,  Socrates  called   upon  men  to  be  their  own  I  \ 
deliverers : 

"  Once  read  thine  own  breast  right, 
And  thou  hast  done  witli  fears, 
Man  gets  no  other  light, 
Search  he  a  thousand  years. 
Sink  in  tlivself  !     There  ask  what  ails  thee,  at  that  shrine."  ^ 

Socrates,  indeed,  did  not  set  the  subjective  against  the  i 
objective.  On  the  contrary,  according  to  Xenophon, 
he  tried  to  prove  by  the  argument  from  design  that 
the  world  is  the  manifestation  of  intelligence.  But 
ho  was  the  first  to  lay  emphasis  on  the  subjective,  and' 
to  teach,  as  it  was  expressed  by  a  later  writer,  that 
"  it  is  by  the  god^_, within  that  we  know  the  god 
without."  For  he  set  up  the  reason  of  the  individual 
as  the  highest  authority  and  guide  of  his  moral  life, 
and  demanded  that  the  law  of  the  state  should  vindi- 
cate itself  before  the  inward  tribunal. 

The  same  thought  runs  through  all  the  works   of 
his    great   followers,   Plato   and    Aristotle.       Both    of/ 
these   maintain   that  the  world   is   a  rational  system// 
which   reaches   its   culminating   manifestation   in    th^l 
life  of  man.     They  admit,  indeed,   that  reason  must 
speak  to  man  from  without,  through  the  visible  world 
of  nature  and  also  through  the  laws  and  customs  of 
civil  society,  ere  it  can  be  awakened  to  speak  within 
him.      They  even  admit  that  the  majority  of  men  are 

^  Matthew  Arnold,  Empedodes  on  Etna. 
VOL.  I.  2  A 


870  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RELIGION. 

not  capable  of  rising  to  the  stage  of  self-conscious 
reason  at  all,  and  that  they  can  have  reason  developed 
in  them  only  so  far  as  to  accept  its  dictates  from 
others.  Still,  the  ultimate  authority  and  motive  power 
of  social  life  is  for  them  the  conscious  reason  of  the 
philosopher.  And  they  hold  that  that  reason  never 
can  speak  to  men  from  without  with  the  clear  self- 
evidencing  power  with  which  it  speaks  within,  to 
those  who  are  capable  of  hearing  it.  "  It  is  in  the 
nature  of  things  that  practice  should  fall  short  of  the 
truth  of  theory."^  Facts  will  not  conform  to  ideas  : 
but  so  much  the  worse  for  the  facts.  In  the  outward 
world  there  is  a  resisting  power — a  brute  necessity, 
which  in  another  point  of  view  is  contingency — and 
this  makes  it  impossible  that  pure  reason  should  ever 
realise  itself  there.  For,  though  reason,  in  the  meta- 
phorical language  of  the  Timaeus,  tries  to  "persuade 
necessity,"  its  persuasions  are  never  quite  successful. 
In  Aristotle,  we  even  find  an  anticipation  of  the 
doctrine  of  development,  or  at  least  the  idea  of  a 
^  scale  of  being  which  reaches  its  summit  in  man.  But 
the  rational  principle  in  man  is  not  included  in  this 
hierarchy  of  nature.  The  pure  reason  in  man  is 
severed  from  the  lower  life  of  sense  and  desire, 
somewhat  in  the  same  way  in  which  God,  as  pure  \ 
self-consciousness,  is  separated  from  the  world  of 
change  and  contingency.  Hence  also  God  cannot  be 
*  Plato,  Republic,  473  A. 


BUDDHISM  AND  STOICISM.  -^-X 

adequately  revealed  in  nature,  either  in  its  parts  or 
in  the  whole  system  of  finite  things.  And,  for  the 
same  reason,  the  moral  activity  of  man,  which  has 
to  do  with  the  regulation  of  his  passions  and  the 
ordering  of  his  outward  social  life,  is  regarded  as 
essentially  inferior  to  the  pure  activity  of  thought  in 
its  inner  converse  with  itself. 

Thus  we  may  fairly  say  that  in  Aristotle  and 
Plato,  as  in  Socrates,  the  original  naive  confidence  of 
man  in  the  outward  manifestation  of  reason  in  nature 
and  in  human  life,  has  been  lost;  and  its  place  is  only 
imperfectly  supplied  by  the  idea  of  a  reason  which, 
in  order  that  it  may  realise  itself,  subdues  and  trans- 
forms a  foreign  matter,  but  is  never  able  perfectly  to 
assimilate  and  absorb  the  material  upon  which  it 
works.  In  these  philosophies,  therefore,  the  sub- 
jective movement  of  Greek  thought  is  only  for  a 
moment  arrested.  In  morals,  the  attempt  to  restore 
the  limited  social  order  of  the  Greek  state  on  the  basis 
of  conscious  reason,  was  doomed  to  failure,  and  the 
magnificent  effort  of  two  great  philosophers  to  re- 
combine  the  new  principle  with  the  old  form,  could 
only  hasten  the  natural  process  of  decay.  The  polit-, 
ical  idealism  of  Plato  and  Aristotle  was  a  gigantic  • 
attempt  to  pour  new  wine  into  old  bottles.  Nor  need 
we  wonder  that,  after  Aristotle,  philosophy  becomes 
purely  individualistic  and  subjective,  and  that  morality 
and  religion  begin  to  be  conceived  as  bound  up,  not 


372  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RELIGION. 

with  the  consciousness  of  objects,   hut  ahnost  exchi- 
sively  with  the  consciousness  of  self. 

Stoicism,  which  is  the  highest  form  of  this  sub- 
jective and  individuahstic  philosophy,  is  a  x^roduct  \ 
of  the  same  movement  of  recoil  upon  the  self  which 
we  find  exemplified  in  Buddhism ;  but  it  differs  from 
Buddhism  as  the  Greek  religion  and  the  Greek  social 
morality  differed  from  the  Brahmanic  polytheism  and 
the  caste  system  of  India.  It  agrees  with  Buddhism 
in  its  subjective  tendency;  for,  as  the  Buddhist  rejected 
the  limitations  of  the  system  of  caste  ^  and  fell  back 
upon  the  inner  life  of  the  self  which  is  the  same  in 
all,  teaching  that  he  is  the  true  '  Brahman '  who 
purifies  his  soul,  whatever  may  be  his  caste  or  out- 
ward rank  ;  so  the  Stoic  taught  that  the  highest  good 
is  open  to  the  slave  Epictetus  as  to  the  emperor  "\ 
Marcus  Aurelius.  It  agrees  with  Buddhism  further  in 
its  abstract  benevolence ;  for  the  universal  pity  and 
charity  which  was  enjoined  on  the  Buddhist  towards 
all  mankind,  and  even  toward  all  living  creatures,  is 
closely  akin  to  the  philanthropy  which  made  the  Stoic 
"  count  nothing  human  alien  to  him,"  and  regard  him- 
self as  a  citizen  not  of  any  particular  state  but  of  the\ 
world.       The    difference    was    that,    along    with    the 

1  Buddhism,  it  is  to  be  observed,  did  not  seek  to  overturn 
caste.  It  treated  it  as  an  external  and  indiiferent  distinction. 
It  dealt  with  it  in  the  same  way  in  which  St.  Paul  deals 
with  slavery  (1  Cor.  vii.  21). 


BUDDHISM  AND  STOICISM.  373 

Universalisiii  which  made  the  Stoic  condemn  his  own 
passions  and  all  the  objects  and  ends  to  which  they 
^'  were  directed,  there  went  a    distinct  conviction  that 
/     the  universal   principle  of  reason  is  realised  in  each  ^ 
man  as  an  individual  self.      The  Stoic  was  not,  there- 
fore, in  danger  of  thinking  that  the  highest  good  lies 
yin  the  extinction  of  self-consciousness,  the  loss  of  the 
individual  in  the  universal,     llather,  he  held  that  the 
individual  man  as  such  is  universal,  that  each  man 
is  embodied  reason,  and  that   therefore   the   absolute 
good  is  realised,  or  is  capable  of  being  realised,  in  him. 
In  this   centre-point   of  selfhood  all  the  good  of  the 
universe    is    concentrated,   and   the    exclusion   of    all 
extraneous   interests   from   its   life   is   desirable,   only 
because   it   enables   it   to   be   a   law   and   an    end    to 
itself.     The    Stoic   empties   his    life    of   objective   in- 
terests, but  it  is    because   he   has   in    his   own  inner 
consciousness    an    interest   which   outweighs   and    in- 
cludes them  all.      His  morality  is,  therefore,  not  the 
morality  that  loses  the  self  in  the  absolute,  but  the 
morality   that   sees    the    absolute    in    the   free   deter- 
/^mination  of  the  self  by  its  own  law. 

Yet,  as  this  law  is  one  that  springs,  not  from  the 
nature  of  the  self  as  this  individual,  but  from  the 
universal  reason  in  him,  the  subjective  morality  of  the 
-Stoic  has  a  side  which  is  essentially  connected  with 
religion,  and,  indeed,  it  easily  becomes  itself  a  religion. 
In  the  consciousness  of  self  we  have  a  principle,  which      | 


374  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RELIGION. 

is  one  and  the  same  in  every  rational  being,  and 
which,  as  it  is  conceiv^ed  by  the  Stoic  as  an  absolute 
principle,  must  be  to  him  at  once  the  source  and  the 
end  of  all  things.  Hence,  for  the  Stoic,  pure  self- 
determination — that  determination  by  the  inner  law 
of  reason  which  he  substitutes  for  all  determination 
by  objective  ends — is  one  with  determination  by  God, 
who  is  the  principle  of  unity  alike  in  the  inner  and 
in  the  outer  world,  the  source  of  the  universe,  and 
the  end  for  which  it  exists.  The  paradox  of 
Stoicism  is  this  immediate  conversion  of  that 
which  is  most  individual  into  that  which  is  most 
universal,  of  the  subject  into  the  object,  of  self- 
determination  into  an  obedience  to  God.  Fod 
"  rff'o  iKircrc  lihcrtas  est";  to  be  free  or  determined  by 
our  inmost  self  is  to  he  guided  by  a  divine  hand. 
Stoicism  is  thus  a  curious  illustration  of  the  truth  that 
absolute  opposites  convert  into  each  other.  It  is  a  self- 
isolation  which  turns  at  once  into  universal  sympathy  : 
a  self-exalting  pride  that  seems  to  rest  wholly  on 
itself,  and  which  yet  at  a  turn  of  the  hand  is  changed 
into  the  humble  sense  of  being  a  mere  instrument 
in  the  hand  of  a  higher  power.  It  is  a  pessimism 
which  finds  unreason  and  evil  in  all  particular  things, 
in  the  whole  course  of  the  outward  world,  and  which, 
therefore,  withdraws  itself  from  the  outward  upon  the 
inner  life.  But  at  the  same  time,  in  virtue  of  the 
absoluteness  of  the  inner  principle  on  which  it  falls 


BUDDHISM  AND  STOICISM.  375 

Ijack,  it  becomes  an  optimism  in  (jcncral,  a  belief  tbat 
the  whole  universe  is  the  manifestation  of  a  divine 
/  reason.  In  fact,  the  development  of  Stoicism  is  just 
the  exhibition  of  the  contradiction  of  seeking  the  ab- 
solute in  the  subject  as  opposed  to,  and  exclusive 
of,  the  object ;  while,  by  its  very  definition  as  the 
absolute,  it   must   transcend   this   distinction. 

But,  in  spite  of  this  innate  and  incurable  contra- 
diction, Stoicism  has  in  it  an  element  of  the  highest 
truth,  if  only  we  view  it  in  the  light  of  the 
idea  of  development,  and  consider  it,  therefore,  not 
as  a  result  in  which  the  mind  of  man  can  rest,  but 
as  a  stage  in  its  spiritual  growth.  For,  though  the 
subject  as  altogether  severed  from  the  object  is  an 
empty  abstraction,'  it  is  througli  the  recoil  upon  the 
subject  in  opposition  to  the  object  that  man  first 
becomes  conscious  of  his  freedom — conscious  of  that 
in  him  which  lifts  him  above  all  objects  he  knows, 
and  which  unites  him  to  the  divine  principle  of  all 
existence  and  of  all  thought.  It  is  through  this  recoil 
alone  that  he  can  realise  his  spiritual  individuality, 
and  thereby  break  away  from  the  power  of  nature,  and 
also  of  the  naturalistic  forms  in  which  truth  is  at  first 
revealed  to  him.  It  is  only  through  this  recoil  that 
he  learns  to  recognise  that  the  simple  bond  of 
humanity  is  a  real  bond,  and  that  it  is  deeper  than 
all  ties  of  family  and  nation,  just  because  the  self 
is  that  in  him  which  is  most  universal  and  independent 


376  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RELIGION. 

of  all  particular  characteristics  or  relations  of  his 
being.  While,  therefore,  it  is  not  true  that  morality 
depends  upon  the  self-isolation  of  the  individual 
from  all  other  men  and  things,  it  is  true  that 
he  who  never  thus  isolates  himself  will  never  find 
his  way  to  the  deepest  sources  of  moral  strength. 
It  is  not  true  that  within  himself  man  is  absolutely 
alone,  but  it  is  true  that  he  who  never  has  felt  the 
solitude  of  an  inner  life,  will  never  discover  the 
real  nature  of  the  tie  that  binds  him  to  nature, 
to  his  fellowmen,  and  to  God. 


X 


LECTUKE  EOUliTEENTH. 

THE    RELIGION    OF    ISRAEL. 

Summart/  Vieio  of  the  Development  of  Subjective  and  of  Objective 
Religion — Moral  Strength  of  Siibjcctvve  Religion — The  Oppo- 
sition of  Spirit  to  Nature — Semitic  Tendency  to  see  God  in 
the  Destructive  rather  than  the  Productive  Powers  of  Nature 
—  The  Hebrew  Transition  froin  Nature  to  Spirit — The  Religion 
of  Sublimity  as  opposed  to  the  Religion  of  Beauty — Opposition 
of  Prophet  and  Priest,  Morcd  and  Cereinonial — Transition  froin 
a  National  to  a  Universal  Religion — Rise  of  Moral  Individual- 
ism— The  Idea  of  a  Covenant  between  God  and  Man — Limits  of 
the  Development  of  Jewish  Religion — Its  History  as  an  Ilhis- 
tration  of  the  Principle  of  Development. 

In  this  lecture,  which  is  the  last  of  the  present 
course,  I  propose  to  speak  of  the  Eeligion  of  Israel, 
the  highest  form  of  subjective  religion ;  but  it  may 
be  useful  first  to  recall  the  results  which  thus  far  we 
have  reached.  Objective  religion,  as  we  have  seen, 
represents  the  Divine  Being,  who  is  the  principle 
of  unity  in  all  existence,  objective  and  subjective,  in 
an  external  and  therefore  a  natural  form.  It,  there- 
fore, bases  the  social  unity  of  man  with  man  upon 
their  common  relation  to  some  power  or  element  in 


V 


878  THE  EVOLUTION  OE  RELIGION. 

nature,   wliieli    is    regarded    as    the   parent  or   fuiuider 
of   the    society  and    is    worshipped    as    its    god.      Yet 
the  power  or  element  in   nature   which  is  thus   wor- 
shipped is  not    universally  or  even   commonly   taken 
as    a    being    like    man.       It    is,    indeed,    personified, 
and   so   invested   with   some  guise   of   humanity ;    but 
usually,    at    least    in    the    earliest    stages    of    religion, 
it    is    some    object    or    class     of    objects    in    the    in- 
organic   or    organic    wcrld    other    than    man.      Witii 
such    a    religion    goes    a    morality    which    is    not    yet 
other,    or    at    least   is    not    yet   recognised    as    other, 
than  the  social  obligation  connected  with  the  natural 
bond    of    kinship,    and    which    of    course    is    limited 
by   that .  bond.      A  certain  widening  of  the  scope   of 
this   naturalistic    morality    takes    place   at   the   stage 
in    which   the   great    elemental  powers — the    heavens 
the    sun    and    moon,    etc. — are    raised    to    supremacy 
over  the   totems,  or  tribal  and   family  deities.      And 
a   still  deeper  transformation  of  it  takes  place  when- 
ever,    as     especially     among     the     Greeks,    but    also 
among  the  liomans,  the  Clermans  and  the   Celts,  the 
naturalistic    gods    are    humanised ;     or,  what   amounts 
to   the   same    thing,    wherever   the   form    and    nature 
of  man  are  taken  as  those  which  alone   can  be  attri- 
buted   to    the    beings    who    are    regarded    as   divine 
For  nature  cannot    be  put  under  man's   feet  without 
some  discernment  in  man  of  qualities  which  are  not 
merely    natural.       In    such    an    anthropomorphic    re- 


THE  RELIGION  OF  ISRAEL.  37 1> 

ligioii  it  soon  begins  to  be  seen  that,  if  spirit  grows 
out  of  nature,  yet  it  goes  beyond  it  and  transforms 
it.  The  poetic  exaltation  of  man  and  the  humanising 
of  nature,  in  the  poetry  and  art  of  Greece,  prepare 
the  way  for  a  philosophy  that  inverts  the  relation 
,    of  natural    and   spiritual,  and  substitutes  the  law    of 

/  freedom  for  the  law  of  necessity.  Thus  Plato  and 
Aristotle  tell  us  that  the  state  begins  to  exist  with 
a  view  to  life,  but  that  it  maintains  its  existence 
with  a  view  to  the  good  or  noble  life — the  life  of 
culture  and  moral  and  intellectual  excellence.  They 
also  tell  us  that  that  which  is  last  as  to  origin 
is  tirst  as  to  the  nature  of  things ;  and  that  it 
is,  therefore,  to  the  highest  results  of  the  state  that 
we  have  to  look  to  find  out  its  true  raison  d'etre. 
l>ut  when  the  spiritual  source  and  end  of  the  social 
life  of  man  is  recognised,  it  becomes  necessary  to 
seek   the   basis  of  his  social  obligations  in   his  inner 

/•  nature  as  a  self-conscious  being,  and  not  in  any 
outward  tie  of  blood  relationship.  The  ultimate 
result  of  this  new  perception  is,  therefore,  a  recoil 
from  the  object  upon  the  sul)ject,  and  the  ex- 
altation of  the  inner  life  at  the  expense  of  the 
outer.  Each  subject  now  finds  the  law  of  his 
being    written,    not    without    him    in    the    order    of 

y  the  society  in  which  he  belongs,  but  within,  in 
the  '  fleshly  tables  of  the  heart ' ;  and  his  relation 
to    (xod   is  no  longer  mediated  for   him   by  liis  mem- 


380  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RELIGION. 

bership  in  a  society,  but  it  becomes  a  direct  re- 
lation of  spirit  to  sjDirit,  a  consciousness  which  is 
bound  up  with  the  consciousness  of  self,  and  which 
indeed  can  hardly  be  distinguished  from  the  con- 
sciousness of  a  better  self  within  us.  The  dialogue 
of  the  soul  with  God  is  an  experience  of  its  own 
inner  life,  into  which  no  outer  voice  can  intrude 
and  which  needs  no  outward  mediation : — 

"  SiDeak  to  Him  thou,  for  He  hears,  and  spirit  with  spirit  can 
meet, 
Closer  is  He  than  breathino-,  and  nearer  thaii  hands  or  feet." 

Now,  this  recoil  upon  the  subject  as  against  the 
object,  upon  thought  as  against  perception  and 
imagination,  upon  spirit  as  against  nature,  always 
has  in  it  something  harsh  and  violent.  Elevating 
God  above  and  opposing  Him  to  all  finite  things 
and  beings,  it  tears  asunder  the  bonds  of  nature, 
and  rends  the  veil  of  art  and  poetry.  It  hardens 
men  in  isolation  from  the  world  and  even  from 
their  fellowmen.  It  "cuts  the  universe  in  two  with 
a  hatchet,"  and  refuses  to  recognise  the  gentle  tran- 
sitions by  which  beauty  leads  man  from  a  lower 
to  a  higher  truth.  It  sets  the  individual  man  alone 
with  himself  and  God,  and  makes  him  regard  every- 
thing else  as  comparatively  indifferent.  And  in  doinc 
so  it  is  apt  to  lose  the  balance  of  truth,  as  decidedly ^ 
as  the  superstition  which  sees  God  only  without  and 
not  within  the  soul.      Nay,  we  might  even  say  that, 


THE  RELIGION  OF  ISRAEL.  381 

ill  the  ultimate  logic  of  it,  it  loses  the  consciousness  of  . 
God  altogether ;  for  a  (tocI  who  is  within  and  not  f  / 
without,  like  a  God  who  is  without  and  not  within, 
is  no  God  at  all.  And  with  this  loss  of  the  object 
must  ultimately  come  loss  even  of  that  subjective 
life  to  which  the  sacrifice  is  made ;  for  the  sub- 
jective has  no  meaning  except  in  relation  to  the 
objective  world,  and,  as  the  Buddhist  saw,  its  free-  . 
dom  from  that  world  turns  into  its  own  extinction.  '  ' 
Nevertheless,  this  concentration  upon  the  subjective 
is  a  necessary  stage  in  the  development  of  man 
both  in  religion  and  morality.  Without  it,  the 
moral  law  in  its  universality  could  not  have  been 
separated  from  all  natural  impulses,  even  those  based 
upon  ties  of  kinship  or  nationality ;  and  without  it, 
religion  could  never  have  cleared  itself  from  the 
superstitious  awe  of  external  powers.  The  one- 
sidedness  of  objective  religion  could  never  have  been 
overcome  without  the  opposite  one-sidedness  of  a 
morality  and  religion  of  the  inner  life ;  nor  could 
the  universal  have  been  realised  as  a  principle  that 
reveals  itself  in  the  particular — but  which  is  not  to 
be  confused  with  the  particular — unless  it  were  once 
for  all  set  against  all  particulars,  even  at  the  risk 
of  being  emptied  of  all  its  contents.  An  abstract  ~" 
'  ethical  monotheism,'  which  is  the  typical  form  of 
subjective  religion,  could  not  elevate  and  idealise 
nature  or  the  natural  life  of  man ;    it  could  not  fur- 


:382  THE  liVOLUriON  OF  RELIGION. 

iiish   the   Ijindiiig   force   necessary  to  make   humanity 

; one    family.       But    its    purifying-    power,    its    power 

to  root   (jut   naturalistic   superstitions    and    to    cleanse 
the    moral    life    of    man,    can    scarcely    be    doubted 
by    anyone    who    contrasts    the    life    of    the    nations 
which   have,   with   that   of  those  nations   which   have 
not,    been    subjected   to    its   influences.      In   more   or 
less    adequate    forms,    as    Buddhism,    as    Stoicism,    as 
Judaism,   as    Islamism,   as    Puritanism,   it    is    the    ex- 
pression of  that  necessary  recoil  by  which  the  spirit 
of  man   turns  away  from  nature,  and  even  from  that 
second   nature   of  social   custom  and   belief,   which   is     \ 
its  own   unconscious   product :   a  recoil   without  which 
it  could,  never   truly   hud   itself.      Even  when   it   has 
become  fanatical,  its   fierceness   has   been   a  cleansing 
lire.      Even   when    it    has    been    violent    and    icono- 
clastic,   when    it    has    refused    to    see    even    in    the 
work  of  a  l*hidias  anything  more  than  a  dumb  idol, 
(jr  in    the   highest   ])roduct  of  the   art  of  a  Eaphael 
anything   more  than,  as  John  Knox   said,   "  a  pented    / 
brod,"  it  has   been   the  exaggeration  of  an  aspect  of 
truth  to  which  it    had   become   imperative  that  men 
should    attend.       We    may    regret    with    Goethe    the 
losses   which   culture   sustains   in   the  victory  of  one 
half-truth  over  another,  but  it  is  certain  that  in  the 
growth    of    man's    spirit    such    losses   are   inevitable ; 
or  at  least   it   has  not  hitherto   been  found  possible 
to   avoid   them.       It    is   hardly   possible   for   man   to 


THE  RELIGION  OE  ISRAEE  :\K\ 

appreciate   a   new  aspect   of    tliin.^s,   especially   of   his 
own    life,    without    being    for    a    time    unjust    to    that 
which  has  preceded  it.      A  spiritualism  which  despises 
nature,  a  monotheism   which   separates   God   from   his    \] 
world,  and  a  subjective  morality  which  divorces  the 

/  inner  from  the  outer  life  and  breaks  the  organic 
bond  between  the  individual  and  society, — these  can- 
not be  conceived  as  a  final  goal  of  progress  in  whicli 
man  can  rest.  But  they  mark  an  essential  stage 
in  the  development  of  man,  a  stage  through  which  he 
must  pass,  ere  he  can  reach  a  consciousness  of  the 
divine  as  a  principle  which  reveals  itself  in  all  the 
differences  of  finite  existence  and  overcomes  them. 

The  highest  and,  as  it  might  be  called,  the  tyincxiJ 
example  of  this  kind  of  religion,  is  Judaism,  and  to  it, 
therefore,  it  will  be  advisalile  for  us  to  devote  most  of 
our  attention.  What  is  said  in  this  lecture,  however, 
must  be  regarded  as  an  anticipatory  sketch,  which  I 
hope  to  fill  out  with  more  detail  in  my  next  course  of 
lectures. 

The  Greeks,  as  we  have  seen,  by  idealising  nature 
ultimately  reach  a  point  of  view  from  which  nature 

1    and  that  which  is  natural  in   man  are  cast   into  the   i 
l.)ackground ;  and  the  pure  inward  self-determination  of 
reason,  which   in  another  aspect  is   determination   by 
God,  becomes  all  in  all.      The  Hebrews  reach  the  same  i 
goal    in    a    more   direct    way.      Tartly    because    they  '■■ 
wanted     the    (ireek    capacity    for    apprehending     the 


384  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RELIGION. 

spiritual  in  the  natural,  they  had  less  difficulty  in 
rising  above  nature  and  attaining  to  a  purely  spiritual 
conception  of  God.  It  is  true  that  this  characteristic 
has  been  somewhat  exaggerated,  and  that  later  stu- 
dents have  found  many  traces  of  an  earlier  nature- 
worship  among  the  Jews.  The  theory  of  Eenan  that 
the  Semitic  race  are  naturally  monotheistic,  cannot  be^ 
maintained  in  the  face  of  what  we  know  of  other 
Semitic  races,  and  even  of  the  race  of  Israel  itself. 
But  there  is  this  element  of  truth  in  it,  that  the 
Semitic  family,  and  especially  the  branch  of  the 
Semitic  family  to  which  Israel  belonged,  tended  to 
recognise  the  manifestation  of  a  divine  power  rather 
in  the  more  threatening  and  anomalous  aspects  of 
nature,  than  in  its  brighter  and  more  genial  aspects,  or 
in  its  ordinary  phenomena  of  production  and  increase. 
It  was  from  the  tempest,  the  tumult  of  heaven  and 
earth,  the  thunders  of  Sinai  and  the  earthquake  that 
devoured  the  unbelieving,  that  this  nation  learnt  its 
first  religious  lessons.  And,  if  her  prophets  early  rose 
above  the  Moloch-worship  which  was  found  among 
some  of  her  neighbours,  yet  it  was  not  till  a  comjDara- 
tively  late  period  that  the  nation  as  a  whole  freed 
itself  from  all  traces  of  it.  If  the  prophets  ultimately 
taught  that  the  still  small  voice  within  is  a  higher 
manifestation  of  God  than  the  whirlwind  or  the  earth- 
quake or  the  fire,  yet  even  in  their  sublimest  poetry, 
it   is    these  stormy  agencies  that    they   chose   as   the 


THE  RELIGION  OF  ISRAEL.  385 

symbols  of  the  divine,  rather  than  the  more  ordinary 
and  apparently  regular  phenomena  of  nature.  The 
action  of  God  on  the  world  is  generally  regarded  by 
them  as  disturbing,  transforming,  miraculously  inter- 
fering with  the  usual  order  of  things,  rather  than  as> 

\  establishing  and  maintaining  that  order ;  it  is  treated,.  | 
to  use  the  language  of  geology,  as  catastrophic  rather' 
than  evolutionary.  Or,  if  nature  is  viewed  as  reveal- 
ing Him,  it  is  rather  negatively  than  positively,  by 
the  way  in  which  she  trembles  before  Him,  or  shrinks 
up  into  nothing  in  His  presence.  The  poetry  of  Israel 
is   the  poetry   not  of  beauty  but  of  sublimity.^      Its 

/     leading  thought  is  not  that  of  the  immanence  of  God 
/in  nature,  but  of  His  transcendence, — the  transcendent 

^    might  and  glory  of  a   Being  for  whom  "  Lebanon  is 
not   sufficient  to  burn,  nor  the  beasts  thereof  for   a 
burnt-offering,"   and   who   "  taketh    up   the  isles  as  a 
very  little  thing."     The  Jewish  writers,  in  fact,  regard . 
nature  rather  as  a  negative  than  as  a  positive  starting-    ' 

/point  for  thought.     They  use  the  might  and  majesty 
of  natural  powers  as  showing  what  God   is   only  by 

J  their  nothingness  before  Him,  and  their  incapacity  to  i 
express  and  manifest  Him.     The  strength  of  the  ever- 
lasting hills  is  a  suggestion  of  God's  omnipotence,  but 
nothing  more  tlian  a  suggestion ;  the  order  and  adap- 

^  Hence  Hegel  calls  Judaism  the  religion  of  Sublimity,  as  con- 
trasted with  the  Greek  religion  of  Beauty.  See  Phil,  der  Re- 
ligion, ii.  39  seq. 

VOL.  I.  2  b 


886  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RELIGION. 

tation  of  nature  is  a  suggestion  of  His  wisdom,  but 
nothing  more  than  a  suggestion,  which  tells  as  much 
by  what  it  cannot,  as  by  what  it  can  express.  To 
take  it  as  more  than  this  would  be  the  idolatry  which 
confuses  the  Creator  with  the  things  He  has  made. 
He  has  called  all  these  things  into  being,  and  by  a 
word  ^  He  can  annihilate  them,  and  they  reveal  Him 
only  by  their  instant  obedience  to  Him.  He  speaks, 
and  they  are ;  He  speaks  again,  and  they  cease  to  be.  • 
Hence  the  Hebrew  prophet  looked  upon  nature 
almost  as  indifferently — that  is,  with  as  little  sense 
of  an  abiding  divinity  in  it — as  a  scientific  man  who 
has  taught  himself  to  think  of  it  as  a  system  of 
phenomena  which  can  be  explained  on  mechanical 
principles.  It  was  to  him  only  a  dead  weapon  in 
the  hand  of  the  Almighty,  which  He  had  created 
and  which  He  could  use  and  destroy  at  pleasure. 
It  was  not  and  never  could  be  to  him  what  it  was 
to  the  pantheistic  poetry  of  the  East,  or  what  it  is 

^  The  transition  through  which  the  meaning  of  the  expres- 
sion '"Word  of  God'  passes  in  the  interval  between  the  Old 
Testament  and  the  Gospel  of  St.  John,  contains  in  it  a 
whole  history  of  the  development  of  religion.  The  prophets 
used  it  as  conveying  the  idea  that  God  works  directly  and 
immediately  upon  the  world  without  any  mediation,  uithout 
going  out  of  Himself  or  communicating  Himself  to  that  which 
His  will  has  created.  Christian  theology  uses  it  just  to  express 
the  reverse  of  this  :  that  God  does  manifest  Himself  in  and 
communicates  Himself  to  nature  and  himianity  through  His 
Son,  "  who  is  the  express  image  of  His  Person." 


THE  RELIGION  OF  ISRAEL.  387 

to  the  revived  and  spiritualised^paatheism  of  Goethe 
or  Wordsworth,  the  living  garment  of  deity,  a  mani- 
festation of  God  which  cannot  be  separated  from  His 
existence. 

Now,  for  a  religious  consciousness  of  this  kind,  it  is 
obviously  much  easier  to  pass  'beyond  nature.  One 
who  hears  the  voice  of  God  "  dividing  the  flames  of 
fire "  and  "  breaking  the  cedars  of  Lebanon,"  who 
realises  His  presence  as  a  wasting,  desolating  exhibi- 
tion of  force  throned  on  the  mountain  summits  of  the 
desert  rather  than  in  the  brightness  and  beneficence 
of  the  fertilising  sun,  finds  it  less  difficult  to  get  away 
from  nature  altogether,  and  to  lift  his  mind  to  that 
which  is  purely  spiritual.  He  is  easily  accessible  to 
the  idea  that  the  infinite  cannot  be  contained  in  any 
finite  form,  or  represented  in  any  finite  image.  His 
God  is  already  on  the  way  to  become  a  God  of  pure 
thought,  who  cannot  be  adequately  represented  either 
in  perception  or  imagination.  As  Schiller  says  to  the 
astronomers,  "  I  admit  that  the  heavenly  bodies  are 
the  most  sublime  of  objects^  in  space ;  but  it  is  not  in 
space  that  the  sublime  can  be  found."  ^  The  abstrac- 
tion that  lifts  God  above  every  finite  form,  because 
"  even  the  heaven  of  heavens  cannot  contain  Him," 
is  already  preparing  the  way  for  the  idea  that  He  can 
only  be  revealed  within,  and  not  without.      And  this 

1  Euer  Gegenstand  ist  der  erliabenste,  freilich,  im  Raume, 
Aber,  Freunde,  im  Raum  wohnt  das  Erhabene  iiicht. 


388  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RELIGION. 

is  just  the  transition  which  we  find  achieved  and  ex- 
pressed by  the  prophets  of  Israel.  It  was  their  great 
inspiration  which  changed  the  fear  of  that  which  is 
greater  than  nature  into  the  reverence  for  that  which 
is  spiritual,  and  thereby  separated  their  religion  once 
for  all  from  the  horrors  and  sensualities  of  Baal  and 
Moloch  worship,  which  corrupted  and  poisoned  the 
moral  life  of  the  races  that  were  their  nearest  kindred. 
This  transition  is,  in  fact,  the  characteristic  movement 
of  thouglit  that  has  stamped  itself  most  deeply  on  the 
pages  of  the  Old  Testament, — from  the  period  in  which 
Abraham  learned  to  reject  the  idea  of  human  sacrifice 
to  the  latest  and  highest  utterance  of  the  Psalms, 
which  declare  that  God  is  one  who  prefers  mercy  to 
sacrifice.  It  is,  so  to  speak,  the  negation  of  nature 
immediately  passing  into  the  assertion  of  spirit. 

But  if  the  strength  of  the  religious  thought  of  Israel 
is  that  it  is  continually  engaged  in  making  this  tran- 
sition, its  weakness  is  that  it  never  quite  completes  it. 
Its  whole  history  is  the  history  of  the  war  of  proj)het 
against  priest,  who,  however,  have  always  to  come  to 
terms ;  for  neither  can  as  yet  do  without  the  other. 
The  nation  may  be  said  to  possess  an  outward  worship, 
jnd  in  order  that  it  may  transcend  it  and  look  down 
upon  it ;  to  maintain  the  temple,  the  altar,  and  the 
sacrifice,  just  in  order  that  it  may  teach  by  contrast 
that  the  true  temple  of  God  is  the  soul  of  man,  and 
that  the  true  priest  is  he  who  offers  the  sacrifice  of 


X 


THE  RELIGION  OF  ISRAEL.  389 

a  broken  and  contrite  heart  to  God.  Hence  the  last 
outcome  of  the  life  of  the  nation  was,  on  the  one 
hand,  the  Levitical  law  which  hedged  round  the  life 
of  the  Jewish  devotee  with  the  minutest  prescriptions 
of    outward    service    and   ritual ;    and,   on   the   other 

/  hand,  the  book  of  Psalms,  which  expresses,  in  language 
that  the  highest  Christian  devotion  is  glad  to  accept 
as  its  own,  the  inward  yearning  of  the  soul  that  turns 
away  from  all  outward  forms  as  empty  and  worth- 
less, and  is  content  with  nothing  short  of  the  deepest 
inward  union  with  God.  "  Sacrifice  and  offering  Thou 
didst  not  desire.  Then  said  I,  Lo  !  I  come,  I  delight 
to  do  Thy  will,  0  God.  Yea,  Thy  law  is  within  my 
heart." ' 

When  we  look  at  the  outward  national  life  of 
Israel,  we  find  the  same  transition  presenting  itself 
in    another   form.     The    Hebrew    nation   begins,   like 

/  other  nations,  with  a  national  God  and  a  morality 
which  is  conceived  mainly  as  the  realisation  of  the 
bond  of  kinship  between  the  children  of  Abraham. 
Yet,  characteristically,  the   connexion    of  Israel  with  \i 

Aits  God,  from  the  earliest  time  of  which  we  have 
record,  is  regarded  rather  as  the  relation  of  subjects  to 
their  Lord,  than  that  of  children  to  their  father. 
Nay,  we  may  even  say  that  it  is  regarded  as  the 
relation  of  soldiers  to  their  general ;  for  the  cradle 
of  the  religious  life  of  Israel  was  the  desert  camp, 
1  Psalms  xl.  6. 


/-N 


«/5 


300  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RELIGION. 

and  Jehovah  was  at  first  but  a  God  of  battles,  under  \ 
whose  guidance  a  loose  aggregation  of  tribes  was 
♦  converted,  first  into  an  army,  and  then  into  a  nation. 
And  as  the  nation  was  founded,  so  it  was  again  and 
again  restored,  by  warlike  leaders  whom  the  inspira- 
tion of  Jehovah  raised  up,  to  assert  its  unity  and 
independence  against  Moab  and  Ammon,  against  the 
Canaanites  and  the  Philistines.  Hence  we  may  say 
that  the  people  of  Israel  are  at  first  less  close  to 
their  God  than  most  other  nations,  being  merely  His  \ 
servants  and  not  His  children.  Yet  this  very  nega- 
tion of  natural  relationship  made  it  easier  for  the 
Israelite  to  rise  to  the  conception  of  a  spiritual  unity 
which  is  closer  than  any  merely  natural  bond.  The 
spiritual  fatherhood  of  God  was  the  ultimate  message 
of  Israel  to  the  world,  just  because  it  began  by 
setting  aside  the  idea  of  His  being  the  natural  parent 
of  the  race. 

In  the  pre-Christian  history  •  of  the  Jews,  at  least 
two  steps  are  taken  in  this  direction.  In  the 
earliest  times,  as  I  have  indicated,  we  have  cood 
evidence  that  Jehovah  was  regarded  merely  as  the 
national  god,  the  Lord  of  Hosts,  who  made  war  at 
the  head  of  the  nation  against  its  enemies  and 
their  gods.  And,  as  a  national  god,  he  was  con- 
ceived to  be  related,  not  to  individuals  as  such,  but 
only  to  the  nation  as  a  collective  whole.  So  far, 
therefore,  the  .morality  of  Israel  was  like  the  morality 


THE  RELIGION  OF  ISRAEL.  :^9I 

of  other  early  races — a  morality  which  had  for  its 
main  principles,  the  solidarity  of  the  kinship  within 
itself  and  the  entire  exclusion  of  other  kinships  from 

'  all  the  charities  and  privileges  of  life.  And  the 
religion  of  Israel  in  this  period  was  just  the  con- 
secration of  this  unity  and  this  opposition.  But, 
as    the   view    of   the    relation   of  Israel    to    its   God 

yr  becomes  spiritualised,  it  tends  to  break  away  from 
these  merely  national  limits  in  two  different  ways. 
It  tends  to  become  at  once  individualised  and 
universalised,  i.e.  it  tends  to  become  a  subjective 
relation    of    the    individual    to    his    God,  and   at  the 

/  same  time,  being  based  on  subjective  conditions,  it 
tends  to  be  regarded  as  not  confined  to  Israel 
alone.  I  say,  it  tends  in  this  direction.  For 
though,  during  the  pre-Christian  history  of  the 
nation,  it  is  continually  moving  towards  this 
goal,  it  never  completely  attains  it.  Stubbornly 
rooted  in  national  exclusiveness  and  national  privi- 
lege, it  is  always  striving  to  reach  beyond  both. 
The  higher  mind  of  the  Hebrew  nation  is  con- 
tinually reacting  against  a  prejudice  which  it  can 
never  conquer,  which  at  least  it  never  could  con- 
quer, until  the  founder  of  Christianity  broke  away 
the  spiritual  fruit  of  its  labours  from  the  tree  on 
which  it  first  grew,  and  planted  it  out  in  the  wide 
field  of  the  world.  The  end,  however,  is  already 
foreshadowed    in    the   earliest  of  the  prophets  whose 


392  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RELIGION. 

writings  have  come  down  to  us.  As  God  was  not 
the  natural  father  of  the  race,  He  was  not  to 
be  conceived — so  Amos  the  inspired  herdsman  of 
Tekoa  already  taught — as  their  unconditional  patron 
or  partisan ;  but  His  favour  for  them  was  bound 
up  with  the  moral  relation  of  iluir  will  to  His. 
If  Israel  was  privileged  to  hear  the  voice  of  God, 
it  had  upon  it  the  weight  of  a  greater  responsi- 
bility, which  must  bring  with  it  a  greater  punish- 
ment for  failure.  "  You  only  have  I  known  of  all 
the  families  of  the  earth,  therefore.  I  will  punish  you 
for  all  your  iniquities."  It  is,  however,  impos- 
sible to  conceive  such  a  spiritual  relation  as  one 
of  privilege.  By  the  very  fact  that  it  is  regarded 
as  a  moral  relation,  it  cannot  be  consistently  re- 
presented as  a  relation  between  a  particular  god 
on  one  side  and  a  particular  nation  on  the  other. 
The  God  who  stands  in  a  purely  ethical  relation  to 
His  worshippers  is  of  necessity  the  one  and  only 
God,  and  the  men  to  whom  He  stands  in  that 
relation  are  necessarily  men  of  any  and  every  race 
or  people.  Further,  as  such  an  ethical  relation  is 
one  which  involves  inward  conditions,  it  must  be  a 
relation  of  the  individual  as  such  to  God,  and  not 
one  in  which  the  individual  is  lost  in  the  family 
or  the  nation.  Hence  the  later  prophets,  Jeremiah 
and  Ezekiel,  set  themselves  against  the  idea  of  a 
collective   responsibility  for   good    or   evil ;    and   they 


THE  RIUJGION  OF  ISRAEL.  :{iJ8 

take  their  stand  on  the  principle  of  ethical  indi- 
vidualism, that  each  moral  agent  must  answer  for 
his  own  doings.  "  What  mean  ye  that  ye  use  this 
proverb  concerning  the  land  of  Israel,  saying :  The 
fatliers  have  eaten  sour  grapes  and  the  children's 
teeth  are  set  on  edge  ?  As  I  live,  saith  the  Lord 
(lod,  ye  shall  not  have  occasion  to  use  this  proverb 
in  Israel.  Behold  all  souls  are  Mine,  as  the  soul 
of  the  father,  so  also  the  soul  of  the  son  is  Mine : 
the  soul  that  sinneth,  it  shall  die."  ^  "  Everyone  shall 
die  for  his  own  iniquity  :  every  man  that  eateth  sour 
grapes,  his  teeth  shall  be  set  on  edge."  ^ 

Thus  the  three  truths — the  spirituality  of  God, 
the  separate  moral  responsibility  of  the  individual, 
and  the  universality  of  the  relation  of  the  one  God 
to  all  men — are  only  three  different  aspects  of  one 
thought  which  cannot  be  severed  from  each  other ; 
and  with  whichsoever  of  these  aspects  we  begin, 
we  must  necessarily  be  driven  ere  long  to  admit 
the  other  two.  What  we  find  in  the  Hebrew  pro- 
phets is,  therefore,  a  national  religion  in  the  very 
process  of  breaking  away  on  every  side  from  its 
national  limitations.  And  the  transitionary  char- 
acter of  Judaism  shows  itself  just  in  the  con- 
tinual contrast  and  conflict  of  the  most  stubborn 
and  intolerant  claims  of  national  privilege,  with  a 
conception  of  worship  which  reduces  it  to  the 
^  Ezekiel  xviii.  2.  "  Jeremiah  xxxi.  30. 


394  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RELIGION. 

direct  subjective  relation  of  the  finite  to  the  infinite 
Spirit. 

The  same  idea  may  be  illustrated  in  another  way. 
It   is   a   distinctive   characteristic  of  Jewish   thought 
that,  instead  of  resting  the  spiritual  upon  the  natural, 
^  and    basing  the  moral  bond   of  man  with  his  fellow- 

man  and  with  God  on  the  physical  fact  of 
common  blood,  it  treated  the  bond  of  nationality 
as  deriving  all  its  sacredness  from  a  spiritual 
relation  of  Israel  to  God,  which  had  been 
established  by  a  special  contract  or  covenant  of 
obedience.  Now,  the  idea  of  such  a  covenant  might 
at  first  seem  to  be  favourable  to  the  conception  of 
national  privilege  ;  but  it  is  really  opposed  to  it,  in 
,  ,.  so  far  as  it  bases  the  relation  between  God  and 
man  upon  a  spiritual  act  of  man  himself.  And  this 
opposition  could  not  but  manifest  itself  more  and 
more  clearly,  as  the  obedience  required  in  the  divine 
covenant  detached  itself  from  the  accidents  of  cere- 
mony and  ritual.  A  covenant  '  to  do  justly,  to  love 
mercy,  and  to  walk  humbly  with  God,'  could  be 
made  only  with  a  God  who  was  identified  with  the 
universal  principle  of  right ;  and  it  was  a  covenant 
into  which  all  men  were  equally  called  upon  and 
equally  entitled  to  enter.  The  goal  towards  which 
the  whole  development  of  Jewish  religion  points,  the 
ultimate  outcome  of  the  teaching  of  prophets  and 
psalmists,   is,   therefore,   the    consciousness    that    each 


y 


THE  RELIGION  OF  ISRAEL.  395 

individual  spirit  of  man  has  an  inward  relation  to 
/  the  Father  of  spirits,  the  God  who  is  the  source  at 
once  of  all  spiritual  and  of  all  natural  existence. 
Logically  carried  out,  such  teaching  could  end  only 
in  a  subjective  and  individualistic  religion,  a  religion 
of  the  inner  as  opposed  to  the  outer  life. 

At  the  same  time,  while  this  is  the  goal  of  the 
development,  the  ultimate  outcome  of  the  religion, 
we  have  to  remember  that  the  religion  exists  only  i 
in  the  process,  and  not  in  the  result.  In  other  ' 
words,  we  are  not  to  suppose  that  the  full  import 
of  the  religion  can  be  seen  simply  by  looking  to 
the  end  or  logical  issue  to  which  it  ultimately 
brings  its  adherents,  without  reference  to  the  whole 
movement  by  which  it  reaches  that  issue ;  and  also, 
it  may  be  added,  without  reference  to  the  manner 
in  which  that  issue  prepares  the  way  for  a  still 
further  advance.  For  the  result  attained  is  in  itself 
imperfect,  and,  its  imperfection  once  seen,  it  becomes 
the  beginning  of  a  new  movement  of  development. 
A  purely  subjective  religion  would  be  a  narrow  and 
limited  thing,  if  we  regarded  it  by  itself,  nay,  as  we 
have  already  seen,  it  is  self-contradictory;  for  the 
subject  as  divorced  from  the  object  loses  all  meaning. 
But  the  real  value  of  such  religion  lay  just  in  this,  that  {  ^^^ 
it  was  the  final  term  of  one  stage  of  evolution  and  the 
beginning  of  another.  It  is  the  great  error  of  dog- 
matism to  forget  that  'ideas  are  living  things  which 


v!l 


396  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RELIGION. 

have  hands  and  feet,'  and  that,  if  we  fix  them  as 
definite  results,  no  more  and  no  less,  we  take  away 
their  life  and  power.  The  life  and  power  of  Jewish 
religion  lay  in  the  process  towards  the  universality,  \ 
which  was  also  a  process  towards  the  subjectivity,  of 
religion ;  but  it  did  not  attain  this  latter  point  till 
its  very  latest  stage,  when  it  began  to  harden  into 
a  formalism.  Thus  the  doctrine  for  which  the 
prophets  contended — that  religion  must  be  a  purely 
subjective  relation  to  a  spiritual  God,  was  a  rela-  \ 
tive  truth.  And  it  was  of  the  greatest  import- 
ance to  emphasise  that  truth  at  a  time  when  the 
great  enemy  of  religion  was  a  superstition  which 
treated  God  as  a  merely  external  power,  who 
secui'ed  privileges  to  men  in  virtue  of  their  be- 
longing to  a  particular  kinship  and  of  their  per- 
forming certain  outward  rites.  But,  so  soon  as  the 
end  was  reached  and  the  thought  began  to  arise 
that  religion  is  merely  subjective  and  individual,  so 
soon  as  it  became  dissociated  from  the  social  bonds  . 
of  family  and  nationality,  it  was  in  danger  of  pro- 
ducing an  unhealthy  division  of  the  inner  from  the 
outer  life — an  opposition  of  the  universal  principle 
to  all  the  particulars  in  which  it  could  be  realised. 
The  sense  of  national  privilege  could  be  safely  set 
aside  only  when  it  became  possible  to  conceive  of  a 
unity  of  all  men  on  the  ground  of  a  spiritual  rela- 
tionship,—  a    unity     whicli    at    once     transcends     all 


THE  RELIGION  OE  ISRAEL.  .397 

natural  bonds  and  gives  them  their  relative  value. 
The  feeling  of  the  innnediate  relation  of  the  indi- 
vidual subject  to  God  could  cease  to  be  connected 
with  obedience  to  a  iJivine  King  and  Lawgiver  who 
spoke  to  a  special  nation  through  the  thunders  oi' 
Sinai,  only  when  God  was  regarded  as  a  Universal 
Father  of  spirits.  For  only  such  a  God  can  be 
represented  as  the  immanent  principle  of  all  life  and 
being,  who  unites  all  men  to  each  other  as  members 
of  one  family,  and  who  therefore  is  manifested  in 
the  inner  life  and  consciousness  of  each,  only  as, 
at  the  same  time.  He  unites  him  to  all  his  fellows 
and  to  the  world. 

The  long  toil  of  Jewish  history ;  the  struggle  of  the 
spirit  of  monotheism  with  the  infection  of  the  sen- 
suous nature-worships  of  the  kindred  peoples,  and 
with  the  darker  elements  of  its  own  earlier  faith ;  the 
destruction  of  the  nation  itself  as  an  outward  secular 
power ;  the  sufferings  of  its  captivity,  and  the  great 
prophetic  inspirations  with  which  it  consoled  itself ;  its 
revival  no  longer  as  a  separate  state,  but  rather  as  a 
kind  of  monotheistic  church,  holding  itself  apart  from 
the  idolatry  of  other  peoples ;  the  long  vicissitude  of 
fortune  in  which  it  maintained  its  stubborn  l*uri- 
tanic  protest  against  the  world,  and  nourished  in  its 
bosom  the  unquenchable  hope  of  a  Messiah  who  should 
redeem  at  once  itself  and  the  world :  this  whole  his- 
toric process  furnishes  perhaps  the  most   striking   of 


398  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RELIGION. 

all  illustrations  of  religious  evolution.  In  other  words, 
it  exhibits  to  us  a  typical  instance  of  the  development 
of  a  religious  idea  from  lower  to  higher  forms,  till 
finally  it  exhausts  itself  and  dies,  only  however  to  rise 
again  in  a  religion  of  a  still  higher  type.  Nor  has  this 
illustration  of  development  lost  any  of  its  force  in 
consequence  of  those  modern  investigations,  which 
have  so  greatly  altered  the  prevailing  view  of  the 
relations  of  the  Old  Testament  writings.  If  there  be 
good  reason  to  regard  the  books  of  the  Pentateuch  as, 
partly  at  least,  an  ex  post  facto  reconstruction  of  early 
history,  in  conformity  with  the  views  of  a  later  time ; 
if  there  be  good  reason  to  suppose  that  the  earliest 
religion  of  Israel  was  the  worship  of  a  national  God, 
who  was  revealed  mainly  in  the  more  gloomy  and 
terrible  aspects  of  nature,  and  that  it  was  only  by 
the  long  struggle  of  the  prophets  that  this  worship  of 
terror  was  changed  into  the  reverence  for  a  God  of 
justice  and  mercy, — such  results  of  criticism  do  not 
really  tend  to  lower  but  rather  to  raise  the  value  of 
that  history,  as  a  support  to  our  faith  in  a  Divine 
Being  who  has  been  gra,dually  revealing  Himself,  not 
by  signs  in  heaven  or  on  earth,  but  through  the  natural 
working  of  man's  own  spirit.  On  the  contrary,  such 
applications  of  the  idea  of  development  to  human 
history,  seem  to  be  now  for  the  first  time  yielding  us 
rational  evidences  for  those  religious  beliefs  which 
formerly  were  supported  by  a  kind  of  artificial  scaf- 


THE  RELIGION  OF  ISRAEL.  :390 

folding.  To  discern  the  steady  movement  l)y  which, 
in  continual  struggle  with  nature  and  with  himself, 
man  is  ever  advancing  to  a  deeper  comprehension  of 
his  own  nature  and  a  clearer  recognition  of  the  divine 
power  which  is  the  beginning  and  end  of  his  life,  this, 
it  seems  to  me,  is  a  far  more  real  help  in  dealing  with 
tlie  doubts  that  inevitably  beset  us  as  to  the  ultimate 
meaning  of  human  existence,  than  any  miracle  that 
could  bring  us  into  relation  with  a  spiritual  world 
which  was  essentially  divorced  from  the  world  of  our 
experience.  And  it  is  something  more  than  a  happy 
coincidence  that  the  same  intellectual  progress,  which 
has  incidentally  weakened  some  of  the  adventitious 
supports  of  religion,  should  also  have  brought  with 
it  this  more  natural  and  rational  basis  of  belief.  In 
this  light  "  Moses  and  the  prophets "  may  be  more 
to  us  than  "  if  one  rose  from  the  dead " ;  for  the 
evidence  thus  given  is  not  externally  brought  to  the 
aid  of  ideas  which  have  no  immediate  connexion 
therewith.  It  is  simply  the  evidence  derived  from 
the  growth  of  the  ideas  themselves. 

In  my  second  course  of  lectures  I  shall  endeavour 
to  follow  more  closely  the  development  of  the  subjec- 
tive principle  in  the  Jewish  religion,  and  especially  to 
throw  some  light  on  the  connexion  between  its  ulti- 
mate form  and  the  Christianity  which  at  once  fulfilled 
and  destroyed  it.  And  then  I  shall  attempt,  so  far  as 
time  and  ability  will  permit  me,  to  show  what  is  the 


400  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RELIGION. 

principle  or  gerniinative  thought  presented  to  us  in 
the  recorded  words  of  the  Founder  of  Christianity,  and 
how  it  has  gradually  developed  into  that  system  of 
life  and  thought  which  has  passed,  and  is  still  passing, 
through  so  many  phases. 


END    OF    VOL.    I. 


GLASGOW  :     PRINTED   AT   THE    UNIVERSITY   PRESS    BY   KOBERT    MACLEHOSF. 


— ' 

Date  Due 

■•  V 

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Theological  Semmiiry-Speei 


1   1012  01009  1363 


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